


i am the eater of worlds (and i’m looking for someone to feed me)

by voxofthevoid



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Endgame is Steve/Bucky, Explicit Sexual Content, Extramarital Affairs, Falling In Love Again, Felching, Good People Being Terrible, Infidelity, Karma What Karma, Light BDSM, M/M, Minor Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers, Oral Sex, Poor Life Choices, Reunions, Rough Sex, Unsafe Sex, With Years in Between
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:13:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21740758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: When Bucky was young, no more than fourteen and already head over heels in love with Steve fucking Rogers, Winnifred Barnes took a long, hard look at a picture Bucky taped to his wall, one of him and Steve at Coney Island, and said, “Be careful with that boy.”She didn’t elaborate then or ever, but Bucky has had plenty of time to learn – over and over and over – what she meant.It’s not that Steve’s a bad guy. But it’s a hell of a thing, being caught in his orbit.-The last thing Bucky expects is to run into the former love of his life at one of Tony's parties. Fifteen years of alienation shouldn’t give way so easily to strange, electric familiarity, but the two of them have always operated on a frequency of their own.It doesn't take Bucky long to realize that the universe should have continued to keep him away from Steve, but it's too late by then.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 269
Kudos: 1111





	1. reliving each moment that slipped through my hands (dissecting emotions that left us for dead)

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags, guys, **_really read the tags._** If you want more detailed spoilers for **both** the chapters, [click here](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/post/189600257801/major-spoilerscontent-warnings-for-i-am-the-eater) to go to the tumblr post I’ve made with relevant content warnings under a read-more. 
> 
> Basically, this is one of those stories where good people make bad decisions, do amoral things, and there’s no karmic retribution for anyone involved.
> 
> (And I’m sorry I keep doing this to you, Sharon. I like you, but MCU’s shitty romance writing has made you a sadly perfect fit for roles like this.)
> 
>  **Edit 28/03/2020:** Guys, GUYS, the lovely [kocuria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria) made moodboards for this fic! You can find the rebloggable versions on her tumblr: [One](https://kocuria.tumblr.com/post/613828854338011136/moodboard-1-out-of-4-for-i-am-the-eater-of-worlds) [Two](https://kocuria.tumblr.com/post/613828848319184896/moodboarding-for-a-smutty-fic-lots-of-fun-1010)

* * *

* * *

“Cut that out.”

“Tony, I’m standing here doing literally nothing.”

“You’re doing that whole–” Tony makes a wavy gesture that explains absolutely jackshit. “–looking thing.”

“Looking thing,” Bucky echoes drily. “Tell me why Pepper ever lets you talk to the media.”

“I’m a charmer that’s why,” Tony says, not even with the peculiar pride of the drunk, just hundred percent certified Starkness. Bucky loves this dumb genius fuck but a burning, near-constant desire to strangle the guy is part and parcel of the experience. “Don’t distract me, Buckaroo. Stop it.”

“Stop _what_.”

Tony actually deigns to look Bucky in the eye when he says, “You’re not my bodyguard here, you’re a guest! Stop doing Maria’s job for her. Eat, drink, and be merry!”

Tony tries to swat Bucky on the arm, but his coordination isn’t the best at the moment so his fingers just glance off the metal plates. Tony looks at the prosthetic he himself built like it has personally betrayed him. Bucky just sighs and swirls his drink around in its fancy glass. It’s non-alcoholic, though he could indulge. Like Tony said, he’s not working. But it makes him anxious to drink with people he doesn’t know.

A flash of green catches his eye, and Bucky grabs the chance to distract Tony from Bucky’s blissful lack of a party life.

“Look, it’s Pepper.”

She’s a stunning sight with that green dress and her flaming hair. Clint’s lurking by the wall next to her, his suit a rumpled mess. He looks like a disaster, and it’s as effective a façade as any to hide the terrifying lethality he’s capable of.

It should be funny, the way Tony’s focus narrows down to the figure of his wife on the other side of the hall. But it’s sweet, not that Bucky would ever admit that out loud; he’s got a reputation to maintain. He ignores the little pang in his chest as the thought comes, unbidden, that there’s no one who draws Bucky’s eyes like that, no one who looks at Bucky like that. There hasn’t been, not for a long time, not since–

“Would you look at that, he actually showed up!”

Bucky blinks himself back to reality and looks at Tony, who’s staring in Pepper’s direction with a bright, predatory grin that’s definitely not aimed at her. Bucky tries to see who Pepper’s talking to, but all he can see are broad shoulders and long, darkish blond hair.

“Who is it?”

“An old friend, notoriously elusive.” Tony’s almost vibrating now. Bucky’s not surprised when he starts to walk over, dragging Bucky along with him. “Been inviting him to these things for years and asshole never shows up. C’mon, you might like him, he’s ex-military too.”

In Bucky’s experience, that’s pretty hit and miss. On one hand, there’s people like Maria and Clint, but some of the other vets he’s met tend to take Bucky being as queer as a bent pole very personally.

Still, he lets Tony drag him over. Pepper doesn’t notice them. She’s smiling at the vet and talking brightly. Bucky knows the carefully manufactured pleasantry she pulls out on people who piss her off but whom she can’t afford to alienate for the sake of SI, and this isn’t that. It’s genuine. That’s a mark in favor of the guy at least.

“Pep!” Tony calls out happily once they’re a few feet away. “And Cap! Can’t believe you’ve graced us with your presence.”

The nickname makes something twinge in Bucky, but there’s a shitton of captains in the military, he should really stop associating it with–

The man turns around.

And Bucky finds himself staring into Steve Rogers’s baby blues for the first time in fifteen years.

-

It was no tragedy.

That’s the worst part, in a way. The world didn’t tear them apart. They weren’t star-crossed lovers.

They grew up together, were each other’s first kiss, first love, first everything. Childhood sweetheart to high school sweetheart to army sweetheart. Didn’t hide it all that well, but don’t ask don’t tell. They survived a war together, even came back home in one piece.

And that’s what they were, for seventeen years. One piece. One soul, two bodies.

Then Steve went off to college, and Bucky joined a private security firm. States apart, drifted apart.

The breakup wasn’t painless, but it was amicable. Saw each other one last time, kissed goodbye. Bucky never regretted it, and the few times he heard of Steve from the common friends they no longer have, it never sounded like Steve was hung up on him either.

He moved on, Steve moved on, but looking into those eyes still feels like a bullet to the heart.

-

Steve’s the first to recover.

“Bucky.” It’s a faint whisper. Then Steve’s eyes brighten and a wide smile splits his face in two. “Bucky Barnes!”

Steve strides forward, and before Bucky can quite figure out what’s happening, he’s being pulled into a hug and _lifted off his fucking feet_ , and no one’s more surprised than he is when he just clings on tight and lets Steve crush his ribs.

He’s set down after a beat too long. Steve pulls away but doesn’t go far, doesn’t take his hands off Bucky, doesn’t stop smiling like he personally assassinated Trump.

“It’s been so long,” Steve says, soft and wondering.

Bucky opens his mouth but not a sound comes out.

“Do you two…know each other?” Pepper asks delicately.

Bucky looks at her and sees the surprise she can’t fully hide. Tony’s even less subtle about it, gaping at the two of them and eyeing the scant space between their bodies. Even Clint has straightened up, blatantly curious as he stares.

Bucky gets it. He’s not a very touchy person, and he’s never, ever reacted well to random fuckers grabbing him, even – especially – the tactless fuckers who try to grope his metal arm. He can see why his friends are a bit too fascinated with how he allowed an apparent stranger lift him in a crushing, full-bodied hug.

But fuck, it’s Steve, and there was a time Bucky knew his body better than he knew his own. It’s clearly not the same now. Steve seems to have bulked up more, shedding the streamlined precision he favored in the army for a barrel-like chest and biceps Bucky can’t get his hand around. It would be easy to dismiss it as empty gym-conditioned muscles except that Bucky knows all too well how dangerous Steve can be with his goddamn pinky finger.

And Bucky can’t figure out what the hell is going on with Steve’s hair. He’s got a _beard_.

“We served together,” Steve says brightly. “And before that, we were friends since we were kids.”

He looks at Bucky then, and his expression doesn’t change much, just enough to let a question through.

“He’s my ex,” Bucky says in answer.

Steve’s grin turns lopsided.

“That too.”

There’s a long, awkward silence. Predictably enough, Tony is the one who breaks it.

“Well, that explains it.”

“Explains what?” Steve asks.

“Nothing,” Bucky snaps as Tony opens his mouth. He takes a careful step away from Steve. He can’t categorize what he feels when Steve’s warm palms fall away from his shoulders. “Hey, Steve. Been a while.”

“Fifteen years,” Steve says. This time, his smile does fade. Bucky was wondering what it took. “How you’ve been?”

“Good.” Bucky nods jerkily. “I’m, uh, good. You?”

“Oh, same.”

More of that strange silence. Awkward but not unpleasant. Just strange. Even Tony doesn’t seem to know what to say. He would still have found something half a decade ago, but marriage and three years of fatherhood have mellowed him some.

“Ah, May and Peter are here,” Pepper says suddenly. “I should go say hi. It’s good to see you here for a change, Steve. Don’t wait another three years next time.”

Steve laughs and nods, kissing Pepper on the cheek before letting her go. Clint goes with her because that’s literally his job. Maria’s more subtle in her operations. Bucky has to actively scan the crowd to even see her. Tony hesitates a second before following. He gives Steve and Bucky both the exact same look, the one that says they _will_ be talking about this later. But Peter’s his protégé of some sort, and Tony just can’t stay away sometimes.

Bucky’s glad to see them go for the same reason that he dreads it. It leaves him alone with Steve.

For a few seconds that drag by, they just look at each other.

“Hi,” Bucky says.

“Hey, Buck.” Steve smiles a little helplessly. “Fuck. Is this real?”

“If I dreamed of you, pal, this wouldn’t be the kind of dream I’m having.”

Bucky winces the moment the words are out of his mouth, but Steve only laughs, throwing his head back. It’s a deep, throaty sound that shudders violently down Bucky’s spine. He watches the long line of Steve’s throat, lingering on his bearded jaw. Steve’s body hair has always been a good two shades darker than his hair, and it sure fucking shows now. He looks so different with a beard, but it’s a damn good look.

With a start, Bucky realizes that Steve has stopped laughing and is now watching Bucky stare at him like a fucking creep.

“What do you do now?” Bucky blurts out, panicked.

“I teach.”

Bucky blinks.

“You hate kids.”

Steve snorts in answer.

“I don’t hate them, they scare me. And I’m a professor, so they’re not really kids. Bit more like aliens. Makes me question my life choices sometimes.”

Steve stops talking, mouth clicking shut with an awkward grin. Bucky doesn’t get why until everything Steve said registers.

Letting Bucky go was one of his life choices. But it’s not like it wasn’t mutual. Besides, it’s been fifteen years, and they were never the bitter sort of exes.

“Professor Rogers, huh?” Bucky says, smiling widely. “Didn’t see that coming. Suits you.”

Steve rubs the back of his neck, a gesture so quintessentially _Steve_ that Bucky’s stunned for a second with the clarity of the memory. Steve, at twelve and twenty and twenty-five, palm cupped across the back of his neck as he smiles that shame, sheepish smile.

It makes sense though. Technically, Bucky has lived longer without Steve than with him. But a decade of that was a childhood he barely remembers now. The fifteen years since they broke up and lost contact is only two years less than the time they spent in each other’s pocket. That’s a very long time to know someone with all your soul and love them the same.

“You?” Steve asks, gently jolting Bucky out of his thoughts. “Career the same?”

“Yes and no. I work as Tony’s bodyguard now. God knows he needs it.”

“He does.” It’s surprisingly nice to see Steve’s expression darken with a familiar flash of righteous rage. “I’m glad he has you. You’re good, Buck.”

Bucky absolutely does not blush.

He also does not remember the rather special occasions Steve used to save that particular phrase for. Maybe it strikes Steve too because his eyes widen infinitesimally and his cheeks turn pink.

Bucky doesn’t even register how close they’ve drifted together in the last few minutes until Steve reaches out. The sensors in Bucky’s left arm sends signals of warmth and pressure. Steve blinks, but he doesn’t look down at the metal limb, doesn’t ask anything. He just looks at Bucky piercingly, blue eyes sharp on his face. It’s a nice face, soft despite it defined edges; the kind of face you can’t help but trust, never mind that there’s an obstinate, opinionated devil inside the gentle facade. Steve got away with so much shit because of his pretty face and big, blue eyes, and when he couldn’t, Bucky would be there to pick up the slack and save his ass.

Steve’s gaze drops to Bucky’s mouth, and Bucky realizes that he’s smiling, wide and soft.

“I–”

“Steve!”

It’s a woman, blonder than Steve and utterly gorgeous. She sidles up to Steve with a comfortable familiarity that speaks of some history. Steve lets go of Bucky’s hand as if burned, and Bucky takes a startled step back. It puts him in a position to see, very clearly, the kiss the woman plants on Steve. There’s definitely some tongue involved.

Bucky isn’t – disappointed per se. He literally just saw Steve again. But something in him still turns cold.

Steve breaks the kiss, pulling away with a puzzled frown.

“Honey, are you drunk?”

The woman giggles. There is a flush to her cheeks, a brightness to her eyes.

“A little,” she admits. “Never try to drink Melinda under the table.”

“I have a feeling this is a lesson you should have already known,” Steve says, sounding amused. He turns to Bucky and says, “Buck, meet my wife Sharon. Sharon, this is Bucky.”

The woman – Sharon, Steve’s _wife_ , holy fuck – sticks out her hand and Bucky takes it in a daze. She’s got a firm grip and gun callouses.

“Sharon Carter-Rogers,” she says, smiling widely. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Bucky Barnes. You too.”

She grins and lets go but frowns the next second.

“That name sounds familiar.”

Steve’s the one who answers, shooting a quick glance at Bucky’s confused expression.

“I’ve told you about him. Remember? Bucky from the army. My friend.”

 _Boyfriend_ , Bucky corrects in his head with just a smidge of bitterness. Best friend before and through it all. They talked about marriage, once or twice, but those were pipe dreams for the most part. Something to get them through the night and to the other side of nightmares about blood and bullets.

Sharon nods, but it’s an absent thing. It doesn’t look like she really remembers. She steps away from Steve.

“I gotta go. I left Melinda to take a piss. Got distracted seeing you.” The smile she gives Steve is wide and sweet. “See you later, baby.”

Then, she’s gone as quickly as she came, shooting Bucky a flashing smile on the way. Bucky turns to Steve and watches him watch his wife’s departing form.

“She’s a very happy drunk,” Steve says, staring off into the crowd. “Might not recognize you later.”

“Not like we’re gonna be seeing each other,” Bucky says automatically.

That makes Steve look at him, eyes a little too wide.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. I guess.”

Silence falls again, and this time, it’s certainly not pleasant. Bucky finds himself loath to break it even though he knows he should make his excuses and leave. It’s barely half an hour to midnight, and he doesn’t want to be in a room full of strangers when the fireworks begin.

He takes a deep breath and opens his mouth to speak.

“I sh–”

“Can we go to one of the rooms?” Steve says in a rush, cutting Bucky off. “Oh, sorry. What were you going to say?”

“Nothing much,” Bucky says with forced casualness. “A room?”

Steve shrugs.

“Still don’t like fireworks much. I can handle them, but it would be nicer to go somewhere less open. I’d, uh, I wouldn’t mind the company.”

“Way to make a feel guy wanted, Rogers.”

“Aw, c’mon, Buck, you know what I mean.”

It’s just a passing moment, but it’s one that could have fit so easily into who they were fifteen years ago. Maybe that’s what prompts Bucky to say yes, but he has a feeling that he’d have given Steve what he wanted anyway. He never could help himself.

“I have a floor here,” he says. “We can go there.”

Steve’s eyebrows rise into a sharp arch, but he says nothing, just motions for Bucky to lead the way.

They navigate through a crowd that seems to have become thicker. Everyone’s gathering for the fireworks. This is one of the newer floors, with windows on all sides that can be turned into balconies. Bucky’s not a huge fan. It makes him feel too exposed. But the science nerd in him does appreciate what Tony has done.

Steve’s sigh echoes Bucky’s own relief at making it to the elevator.

“My place please, JARVIS.”

“Right away, Sergeant.”

Steve doesn’t look surprised to hear JARVIS. Definitely not his first time at the Tower then. Even people who’ve been warned tend to react in some way to the talking ceiling.

“You come here often?” Bucky asks him.

“Ah, not really. Now and then, when I can. Mostly, Tony comes over to my campus. He sponsors some of the kids there and likes to meet them personally now and then. S’how we met.”

“I was wondering,” Bucky admits.

Steve shoots him a quick smile. It looks like he’s about to say something too, but that’s when the elevator doors open. The space between the elevator and the door that opens to the rest of the floor isn’t exactly small, but it feels cramped with Steve standing so close to him.

Bucky’s glad the door opens on his thumbprint because he would have fumbled like hell with the keys.

“Mi casa, su casa,” he says with an absent sweep of his arm.

Steve whistles appreciatively.

“Living the dream, Buck.”

“It’s soundproofed,” Bucky tells him in an exaggerated whisper. Steve widens his eyes and clutches his chest dramatically, the absolute fucking dork.

Bucky doesn’t mean to, but he can’t turn off the part of him that _looks_ – as Tony says – and catalogues every detail.

“You’re not wearing a ring.”

Steve blinks. His arms drop limply to his sides.

“I forgot it in the bathroom actually. Happens a lot. To the point that I know exactly where to find it when it’s not on my finger.”

“Oh.” Bucky nods, not quite looking Steve in the eye. “So. Married, huh?”

He doesn’t know what to make of Steve’s smile. It’s not an expression he’s familiar with.

“Yeah,” he tells Bucky. “Been four years. Dated for one before.”

“That’s, uh, nice.”

Steve chuckles.

“Not gonna tell me it was too fast?”

“Steve, I realize it’s been a decade and a half, but I’m pretty sure you give as much of a fuck about what other people gotta say about your life as you always have.”

Steve looks pleased at that.

“Glad you remember. Sorry, that’s just the usual reaction. People don’t have the context.”

“Which is?”

Bucky kind of regrets asking. He likes Steve and all, but he doesn’t really want to hear details about the former love of his life’s marriage, least of all when Bucky’s been single for over a year now. And he’s not sure if what he had before that counts; he and Maria were only ever friends with benefits, and that ended when she met Natasha Romanoff for the first time and fell ass over heels in lust and sincere affection.

But the question’s out there, and he can’t take it back now.

“It’s, uh, kind of complicated.” Bucky has a flash of hope that’s thrashed when Steve continues to talk instead of leaving it there. “I dated Sharon’s cousin towards the end of college and in grad school. We broke up. And I – well, Sharon wasn’t a rebound but we slept together, back then. And then I met her again, five years ago, at Peggy’s wedding. Peggy’s the cousin. And we were different people and there seemed to be something, so we gave it a shot.”

Bucky listens with wide eyes, aversion turning into slightly horrified fascination. 

“Steve,” he says at the end, “what the fuck?”

“I know!” Steve laughs. “Life, you know?”

“You always got into the most ridiculous situations,” Bucky says, a little shocked by the surge of fondness that accompanies the words.

Steve’s looking at him with a soft expression that Bucky doesn’t quite know what to do with.

“You’d know,” Steve murmurs. “I don’t mind though. It got me here. Never thought I’d see you again, Buck.”

“Yeah, well. Life’s weird.”

“Truer words. Really though. How’ve you been?”

Bucky’s reasonably sure Steve asked him something similar earlier, but it’s not like he gave a very clear answer.

“Good. Ups and downs, but I’m doing pretty well.”

“I can see that. Floor in Stark Tower. That’s amazing, Buck.”

Steve looks wonderingly around the place. This room’s living space and kitchen both, with doors leading to the main and guest rooms. Large windows show the starless night sky and the sprawling cityscape. It’s too familiar a sight for Bucky to be awed anymore. All he thinks is that he should pull his head out of his ass and offer Steve a seat, play at being a good host.

“I, uh, don’t actually live here,” Bucky says uncomfortably. He shuffles towards the couch, hoping Steve will follow, relieved when he does. “Got an apartment. Not very far from here, twenty minutes or so. This place is Tony’s way of showing his affection, and well, what am I going to do, say no to _this_? Plus, it gives me a space of my own to crash here.”

Steve’s silent. Bucky stops short of the couch and turns around. He almost jumps a foot in the air when he finds Steve standing way too close. Steve’s eyes widen too, but he doesn’t move away. Neither does Bucky, rooted on spot by sheer shock.

Like this, Steve seems bigger than ever. It makes Bucky feels a little small, and fuck, that never happens.

But then, Steve made him feel like this even when the guy was five-foot nothing of righteous rage. He towered over Bucky with his burning blue eyes and fiery convictions, and Bucky liked it them, liked it later too, when Steve shot up like a weed in junior year and the army added the bulk to go with that height. He likes it now too, but admitting that even in just his head feels weird. Steve’s married, and Bucky’s got history with the guy he can never unknow.

A beat too late, he realizes that Steve’s saying something.

“–like this.”

“Huh? Sorry, can you say that again?”

Steve’s expression shifts into fond exasperation. It looks different than it used to, what with the generous helping of facial hair, but Bucky’s pleased he can still recognize it.

“Nothing, just–” Steve shakes his head, his smile faint and crooked. “It’s good to see you. Still a shock though. You’re so – god, you’re so different.”

“Says the guy with hairs colonizing his face.”

Steve reaches out suddenly, and Bucky freezes. He can’t say why he doesn’t flinch instead. But all he does is stand still as fingers rub over the stubble spread over his jaw.

“Hypocrite,” Steve says fondly.

“That’s different.” Bucky feels a little choked. Steve’s hand feels – nice, too nice, _fuck_. “You’ve got a situation there, pal.”

Steve takes his hand back, and Bucky almost slumps at the rush of conflicted relief. _Married man, married man_ , he chants to himself. He’d have been able to somehow justify jumping on his ex’s – never mind that Steve isn’t and will never be just some ex – dick if the guy was single, but this is a whole other ballgame.

“You don’t like it?”

And damn those puppy eyes.

“I didn’t say that,” Bucky squeaks out and worst thing is, it’s true. He only hates the beard for how distracting it is, how it makes him look at Steve and imagine – imagine things.

“Uh huh,” Steve says, grinning. The expression drops suddenly, turning solemn. “I’m not the only one who’s different.”

Steve doesn’t look away from Bucky’s eyes as he reaches for his left hand. Bucky lets him take it, letting out a shuddering breath at the warm clasp around his metal fingers.

“Can I ask what happened?”

Bucky swallows.

“Was starting to think you hadn’t noticed,” Bucky says, going for levity and missing by a mile. It’s not the arm though. It’s Steve, mostly.

“Didn’t want to bring it up out there,” Steve says with a shrug. “Make you uncomfortable. And to be honest, I was too shocked by seeing you to really think.”

Something in Bucky, a knot he wasn’t even aware of, loosens. The grin that cracks across his face is genuine enough to make his own heart hurt.

“Ironic, isn’t it? Eight years in the army, and I got out with all limbs intact. Didn’t last that long in civilian life before I got myself blown up.”

“Christ.” Steve’s hand tightens around Bucky’s. It’s comfort, not pity, and Bucky needs neither these days, but he’s always melted so easy for Steve’s boundless well of compassion. “How…?”

“You ever hear of the whole Stark-Stane scandal?”

Steve frowns.

“Just the bare details. I’ve only known Tony for the last five years or so. I know he’s been through some shit, but that’s it. He’s never talked about it. Sharon mentioned something, but I didn’t pay much attention. She’s CIA and got a tendency to run background checks. I don’t much like invasions of privacy.”

Bucky snorts.

“Yeah, you haven’t changed. And well, long story short. Eight, nine years ago, Tony’s dad’s business partner tried to bomb him and pass it off as terrorist attack. SI was still making weapons then. I’d been working for Tony for, what, seven months at that point? Got caught in the explosion. Don’t remember much, but Tony insisted I saved his life. Hired me as his personal staff, made me this arm. It’s – it’s something else. Took us a couple of years to refine it, but it works like a dream. It’s in the market now, one of Tony’s philanthropic projects.”

Bucky, who’s been looking down at the silver of his fingers intertwined with Steve’s fleshy tones, drags his eyes up and finds himself staring into wide blue eyes. He falls silent, abruptly aware that he was rambling nervously.

Steve exhales shakily.

“I never knew.”

Bucky swats his chest with his right hand. It feels like hitting rock, and he snatches his hand away a little too hastily.

“You’d have been kinda creepy if you kept tabs on your ex, Steve.”

“You’re more than just an ex,” Steve murmurs, not quite meeting Bucky’s eyes. And then he does, making Bucky’s breath catch with the look on his face. “You were my best friend, Buck.”

“Yeah.” Bucky swallows, choking down a sound he doesn’t want to make. The burn behind his eyes is unexpected, but he blinks back the tears. “I know. Same, Steve. But – what happened happened. Life’s like that. I’m glad we ran into each other. Weird as shit though.”

Steve huffs, brightening a little.

“Tell me about it.” He looks at Bucky’s hand again and lifts their joined palms up to chest level. “I don’t know if I should say this, but – it’s beautiful, Buck.”

Bucky most emphatically does not blush.

“Tony does good work,” he says faintly.

Steve looks at him like there’s something he wants to say, something he knows that Bucky doesn’t.

That’s when the lights dim and the first firework bursts across the sky. Bucky startles at the green and yellow tint flashing across Steve’s face, then looks outside. The whole floor was soundproofed at his request, so it’s just colors on the sky, beautiful and ephemeral.

“Oh,” Steve exhales softly from beside him.

Bucky becomes sharply aware, again, of how close standing, how he can feel the faint heat emanating from Steve’s body. He’s always run hot since that growth spurt of his, but before that, his hands were perpetually cold. Bucky used to miss warming those spindly fingers in his own, and he remembers that now, with Steve’s palm heating the metal of his own.

He doesn’t take his hand away though he really should.

“Won’t your wife be looking for you?” Bucky asks without looking away from the spectacle outside. “New Year’s kiss and all.”

“Not really. We, uh, don’t do that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Romantic things.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that. He thinks of the boy who collected change for a whole fucking year to buy Bucky those pulps he was eyeing for his birthday. He thinks of the dumb teenager who turned their first kiss into something that was almost a fight because he was scared Bucky would push him away, hit him, but then took him to Coney Island when he didn’t and bought him hotdogs and cotton candy with a grin that was shy at the edges. And he thinks of the man with a captain’s stripes who saved Bucky over and over and over, mostly in ways that would have made the army boot them out on their asses.

The Steve he knew liked a little romance, liked a little sweetness with his spice. But it’s been fifteen years, so what does Bucky know.

In the end, they watch the fireworks together. No one comes looking for Steve, and Bucky doesn’t push him to leave. But he does, over an hour later, when his phone rings and the person on the other end prompts him to pull Bucky into a hard parting hug and walk away.

They exchange numbers, but Bucky never texts him, and Steve doesn’t either.

-

“You plan to go see him?” Tony asks as Happy drives them through the campus.

Bucky stops blankly watching the buildings and students pass by, turning to Tony.

“See who?”

“Cap,” Tony says simply, the continues as if he didn’t just tilt Bucky’s world upside down. “He teaches here, don’t you know?”

“How the actual fuck would I know, Tony?” Bucky snaps, harsher than he means to, bad enough that Maria turns around to give him a mildly curious look. Bucky takes a deep breath and leans into his seat, knocking his shoulder into Tony’s in apology.

It’s – disorienting, knowing Steve’s here. It’s almost February. That New Year’s night still haunts Bucky sometimes, and he doesn’t know how to feel about any of it.

“We don’t really talk,” Bucky says, which is an understatement if there ever was one.

Tony hums consideringly. Bucky has learned over the years to dread that sound.

Sure enough, Tony stops Bucky from following him out of the car with a hand on his chest.

“Happy knows where Steve is. He’ll take you.”

“I don’t–”

Tony waits, uncharacteristically patient. But maybe that’s just because he knows, the bastard, that Bucky has no idea how to finish that sentence. He doesn’t want to see Steve? Lie, and it shows, he knows. He doesn’t think he should? Less of a lie, but that would prompt questions Bucky has no clue to answer.

He can’t be honest and say there was something between the two of them that night.

You don’t just forget a man like Steve fucking Rogers, but Bucky definitely forgot how it felt to be caught up in his magnetic pull. It's a subtle thing, always has been. There’s just something about the guy that worms under your skin, and if that was true for Bucky’s clueless ten-year-old self, it’s true for him now when he knows all too well what about Steve appeals to him.

“Fine.”

Tony’s smile is smug. Maria just shoots him another curious glance – one that says they will be talking about this over drinks the weekend – and follows Tony like the world’s most lethal shadow.

Happy, at least, doesn’t comment as he drives Bucky to – wherever.

“Want me to wait?” he asks as Bucky just sits and stares out the window at a towering building that probably isn’t as intimidating as he’s making it out to be.

“No,” Bucky replies after a beat. “I’ll just – yeah, I don’t know, just let me know when Tony’s done.”

“He’ll be a while,” Happy says placidly. “You know how he gets with the kids.”

“Don’t I ever,” Bucky mutters to himself as he psyches himself up for what’s coming. “Hey, you know where Steve’s office is?”

“Third floor,” Happy says immediately. “Don’t remember the room number, but you’ll manage.”

Bucky takes that as his cue and gets out of the car. He tries not to feel too bereft as Happy drives off. He looks around surreptitiously, but no one’s paying him any mind. And they won’t, unless he continues to stand here like a creep. You’re never as obviously out-of-place as you think you are anyway.

Steve’s office is easy enough to find, in the end. Bucky considers asking someone, the first two minutes, but then it’s right there, familiar letters etched in gold lettering on a dark, slightly dusty plaque.

The door’s closed. Bucky knocks, and he doesn’t even know whether he’s hoping Steve’s inside or not.

“Come on in,” a deep, booming voice calls.

“Fucking fuck,” Bucky mutters vehemently to himself.

He does consider, for a hot second, just turning tail and running. Steve would never know. Bucky would be long gone before he came to the door to investigate the phantom knock.

But even as the last of that harebrained plan crosses his mind, Bucky’s pushing the door open.

Steve’s seated behind a large wooden desk, and Bucky stops short at the sight of him. _Professor Rogers_ , he teased that night, but he wasn’t expecting this when he said that.

Thick, black-rimmed glasses. A plain white shirt that just barely seemed to contain biceps straining for freedom. That motherfucking beard.

Bucky must have made some noise. Steve looks up, startled, and the expressions turns into one of acute shock when he finds Bucky standing there by the half-open door, gaping at him like a fucking fool.

“Bucky!”

Steve’s smile is a sudden, searing thing. Bucky doesn’t know to do with it, but some sub-routine of unconscious desire must take over because the next thing he knows, he’s being hugged and hugging back. When Steve lets him go, Bucky finds that he’s in the middle of the room, by the desk, and that the door has been firmly shut.

“What are you doing here?” Steve asks, grin so wide and tone so bright that no one could mistake his words as an accusation.

“Tony,” Bucky says dazedly. Then he gives himself a mental slap and takes a step back from Steve in an attempt to regain some equilibrium. _Married man_ , he reminds himself not for the first time since Steve left that night. “He’s here to give a speech, meet some students. Told me you worked here. I didn’t – I didn’t know.”

Steve’s grin turns into a grimace, and he ducks his head. He takes off his glasses, and Bucky just barely holds in an breathy noise. Steve fiddles with the frame as he talks, not looking up, which Bucky’s grateful for.

“Yeah, uh, I’m sorry about that. I meant to text you but just – I don’t know.” He sets his glasses on his table and rubs the back of his neck, and Bucky helplessly zeroes in on his rolled-up sleeves. The bulging veins on his forearm are a threat to social order. “I didn’t know what to say, I guess.”

The words finally penetrate the soft fog enveloping Bucky’s mind. He reaches for Steve before he can stop and think about how bad an idea that is. He doesn’t think at all, really, which is why it ends up being his left arm, which he doesn’t use to touch people all that much because Tony made it a weapon when Bucky decided to remain as his security detail, and the limb’s stronger than most human arms.

But he does, and for a moment, he just watches the splay of his metal fingers over Steve’s very white shirt. He comes back to himself with a start and squeezes Steve’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry about that. I didn’t text either. Same reason. I get it.”

Steve gives him a tentatively sweet smile. The hand on his neck comes down, crossing the solid Mississippi of his chest to rest over Bucky’s hand. He cups the metal, so soft that Bucky barely feels the pressure.

“I’m glad you came here,” Steve tells him, sounding unbearably sincere. “It would have felt – wrong, I think, if I just let you slip away without even trying.”

Trying _what_ , Bucky wonders but doesn’t say out loud because his tongue feels leaden in his very dry mouth. He licks his lips and tells himself he imagined the brief, downward flicker of Steve’s eyes.

“Yeah,” he manages to choke out after a too-long pause.

Steve’s smiles widen. Bucky can’t read the look in his eyes, but something about it sets him on edge in a way that’s not unpleasant or even uncomfortable. It’s more like a warning bell heralding unwise life choices.

He could just be projecting.

An awkward beat of silence passes before Bucky realizes his hand in still on Steve’s shoulder. He pulls it back. Well, he tries, but Steve’s hand comes with it, then the whole man sways forward, leaving the two of them standing too close and holding hands like the smitten teenagers they used to be.

“Uh–”

Bucky shuts his mouth with a click when Steve lifts their hands, shifting his grip so that he’s holding Bucky’s up by the wrist. He looks away from Bucky’s face and down at the hand, eyes tracking the minute motions of his own fingers along the metal grooves.

“You’re really interested in my arm,” Bucky says, well aware that his voice is too loud.

“I did say it’s beautiful,” Steve murmurs. “You don’t know how many times I’ve itched to put it to paper, the last few weeks. But I knew I couldn’t do you justice.” He looks up then, a fleeting moment of eye contact. “I never could.”

Bucky has a folder, buried somewhere, with over a hundred sketches. Papers with bits and pieces of him – his face, his eyes, his chest, his cock, his whole damn body. His scars.

He hasn’t looked at it in years. And neither the boy nor the man captured in charcoal on those pages look like him anymore.

“Yeah, you could,” Bucky says quietly.

Steve’s eyes darken. He turns back to Bucky’s arm and uses the one not holding it to touch the tip of a finger. He doesn’t say anything, but Bucky can see the questions bursting inside of him.

“Just ask, Steve.”

Steve chuckles.

“Sorry. I was – can you feel this?”

He tightens his grip around Bucky’s wrist, all warmth and pressure. The plates along his forearm recalibrate with a series of clicks. Steve startles but doesn’t let go, staring at the movement with wide eyes.

“Oh,” he breathes.

“Pressure and temperature,” Bucky says, uttering the words in a daze. “The sensations are duller than on skin. But I can feel it.”

It’s like Steve takes that as permission.

He walks his fingers up Bucky’s hand, the pads of his fingers ghosting over the smooth metal of his palm. He’s more hesitant with the plates, justifiably wary of them pinching. But he still touches each and every one of them with a gentleness that feels borderline reverent.

Bucky’s heart is in his throat, pounding like mad.

He’s still not prepared for Steve to raise Bucky’s hand to his mouth.

A kiss is pressed to the center of his palm, the pressure sweet and glancing. Bucky can’t feel the softness of Steve’s lips or the scratch of his beard, but his body reacts like he can, gut twisting in on itself.

Steve’s eyes flicker to him, but his face remains where it is, bent over Bucky’s hand.

“What are you doing, Steve?” Bucky makes himself ask. His voice comes out low and husky, betraying how he felt – can still feel – that kiss all the way down to his fucking soul.

Steve’s lips pucker against the metal one last time. He straightens up, letting go of Bucky’s hand, and the savage blend of relief and devastation is swept away in a rush of panicked want when Steve closes the scant space between them.

“I don’t know,” he tells Bucky. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

“Steve–”

Bucky sees the kiss coming. It’s impossible not to. And as much as he wants to say he was caught off guard, the truth is that he lets it happen.

The moment Steve’s mouth slots along his, Bucky knows it’s too late.

He thinks it was too late from when he ran into Steve at Tony’s party. They did try, the first year after they broke up, to stay friends. Letters, emails, texts – but there was always that undercurrent of pain and need, things they couldn’t shake. They stopped for both their sakes, cut off all contact and assumed they’d never see each other again, and fuck, Bucky’s a goddamn fool.

There’s nothing familiar about the kiss. Fifteen years is a long time to hold onto the memory of a man’s mouth, but Steve reminds him now, relentless as if he can’t bear to rest until the shape of his lips have been etched into Bucky’s heart.

Bucky clings to the broad expanse of Steve’s shoulder and lets the arms winding around his waist hold him up.

Steve pulls back with a teasing swipe of his tongue over Bucky’s lower lip. Bucky lets out a shaky breath when they part, chin tingling from where Steve’s beard rubbed against it. It’s softer than it looks, just rough enough to violently summon the few memories Bucky has of a lover leaving him with beard burn in places that stung when he walked.

Steve’s looking at him with wide, wondering eyes, and this is _wrong_ , but Bucky can’t make his tongue form the words.

“Steve,” he says, a plea for something he can’t understand. He clutches him tighter, fingers pulling at the straining fabric of his shirt. “Stevie.”

Steve shudders, whole body trembling against Bucky’s like the name is a revelation. Bucky groans helplessly into the next kiss, opening his mouth instinctively for the demanding press of Steve’s tongue. Steve’s hands wander down to cup his ass. They’re so big, wide palms and long fingers, easily curving around each of Bucky’s cheeks. He makes a high, shocked noise that Steve eats off his lips.

It escalates quickly, after that.

Bucky’s lifted by the ass, Steve’s grip firm and unshaking, as it’s nothing to lift almost two hundred pounds of man and metal. The impressive display of strength goes right to Bucky’s dick, gets it twitching violently to life.

Steve plants him on the desk. Papers fall to the floor, followed by things that make a series of solid thuds. Steve doesn’t once stop kissing Bucky, groping him frantically over his suit, tugging now and then at buttons with too little coordination to get anything open. Bucky’s reduced to a shuddering body and panting mouth, an illicit thrill crawling up his spine as Steve kisses him so good and hard that all anyone would need to do is take one look at his lips to know what’s been done to him.

Steve breaks their kiss with a rough, guttural sound and sets his mouth to Bucky’s throat, licking wet stripes along his jaw and sucking hot bruises down his neck until he’s got his teeth in Bucky’s pulse. Bucky’s hips jerk forward, pure, animal pleasure coursing through him.

He remembers, now, that it’s always been like this with Steve. He learned early on to play Bucky like a violin, and god, he took advantage of it for years of the life they shared. And Bucky let him, Bucky has always let him.

He lets him now, baring his throat for teeth and tongue, thrumming all over from the dull throb of blooming bruises.

Bucky groans pitifully when Steve pulls away, reaching for him unthinkingly as if the warmth of his clothed skin under metal and flesh will chase away how bereft he suddenly feels. Steve leans into the touch, kisses Bucky on the mouth, hard and close-lipped. He tugs at Bucky’s suit jacket.

“Off,” he says, desperate and demanding at the same time.

Bucky’s scrambling to strip before he quite thinks about it, hopping off the desk to shed his jacket and shirt. He sets his gun aside and doesn’t miss how Steve tracks it with a keen gaze. You can take the man out of the army, but you can’t take the army out of the man. Bucky would know.

He also knows Steve tried harder than he did to get it out, _be_ out.

Bucky doesn’t know why chooses to stop then, half-naked with his clothes piled on the floor, and voice what’s been background noise in his head since the first kiss.

“You’re married.”

It sounds so helpless.

Steve, his own shirt only half-unbuttoned, steps closer to Bucky.

“I know.” He closes his eyes and looks so pained. “You’re the one who locked the door.”

Bucky casts a wild glance to the door. It is locked, latched from the inside. He doesn’t remember doing it. Fuck, he doesn’t remember even closing the door, just peering at Steve’s unbearably appealing form and then being close enough to touch.

“I–”

Steve kisses the weak protest right out of Bucky’s mouth, licks in deep until the words he intended to say are a broken haze.

“It’s okay,” Steve says, peppering sharp kisses along Bucky’s cheeks and forehead. “It’s okay, Buck, just let me.”

It’s not okay, it’s not okay at all, but Steve’s always been good at talking sweet. Could get Bucky to jump off a cliff with nothing but the fire in his eyes and the conviction of his words. And this is infinitely easier than throwing himself off the Alps, even if the leap feels just as final.

Steve backs off then, finished taking his shirt off, and the last of Bucky’s obligatory objections die in his throat.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes, reaching out as it bewitched.

If Steve’s chest was firm under his touch through the shirt, there’s no word for how it feels now, bare and rippling with muscles. Bucky cards his fingers through the hair spread over his torso, tugging a little. Steve hisses and closes his hand over Bucky’s wrist but doesn’t stop him, just watches, blue eyes half-lidded and searing as they take in Bucky’s unmasked wonder.

“Fuckin’ hell, Steve. The hell do you do to yourself. I thought you academics were supposed to have, I don’t know, pot bellies and beige cardigans.”

“Stereotypes much? You sayin’ you wouldn’t fuck me if I had a pot belly and beige cardigans?”

Bucky can’t help how his cheeks heat up. His gut clenches as he imagines it, Steve gone all soft and round, and fuck, the answer’s obvious, isn’t it?

“Wanted to fuck you when you were skinny enough to bruise me with your poky bones,” he says gruffly, not meeting Steve’s eyes. “Wanted it after too. Take a wild guess.”

Steve sucks in a sharp breath.

“Forgot how sweet you’d get,” he says softly, and Bucky ducks his head, fingers twisting in his pants. “Look at you though.”

Steve’s hand closes around his right bicep, giving it a harsh squeeze. It wanders over to his chest and grabs one pec in a groping hold. Bucky can’t help pushing his chest out into the touch, breathing hard.

“Pretty pair of tits you’ve got,” Steve says, and the sound Bucky makes is fucking inhuman.

Steve kisses it out his mouth, pats his chest once, and steps out of Bucky’s reach to work his pants off. Bucky does the same, the process made longer than it should be by how he can’t stop pausing every other second to stare at all of Steve’s bare skin.

His mouth waters at the sight of Steve’s dick. When he remembered it – dreamed of it – over the years, he always told himself he was exaggerating the size of it in his head, memories of being split wide on that thing made hazy and rose-tinted by the passage of time.

But no, fuck no, Steve really is that fucking huge.

Bucky crossed the point of no return when he let Steve kiss him, but now he crosses it twice.

Steve, naked and goddamn glorious, steps closer to Bucky, crowding him against the desk. Bucky reaches for him, pulling him close into a kiss that turns wet and heated when their bare cocks press together, growing to full hardness against the silky heat of each other.

“Wanna fuck you,” Steve breathes harshly against Bucky’s lips, punctuating the demand with nipping teeth.

Bucky moans shamelessly.

“Yes, yes, fuck – I’ve got – my wallet, there’s stuff.”

Steve hums and pulls back. Bucky greedily drinks in the view when Steve bends over to sort through Bucky’s pockets. A part of him is fully aware that he’s unlikely to have this again. He’s not new to this story, just never thought it would happen to him.

Steve straightens up, travel-packets of lube and condom case in hand, before Bucky can try in vain to talk himself out of this shit. Steve sets the condom case aside and raises an eyebrow at Bucky as he rips open the lube.

It’s not judgement, but it still rankles.

“Better prepared than sorry,” Bucky says with a bright, false, grin. “Not all of us are married, Steve.”

Steve’s expression darkens, and it’s a shock, how predictable that is. He yanks Bucky into a kiss that’s hard and bruising, then lets him go just as quickly, turning him around and pressing him face-down in the desk. It’s startling, how that change in position leaves him feeling exposed. On display, almost.

The weight of Steve’s eyes settles on his skin as a thick, throbbing layer of heat. One of those oversized hands palm his ass, spreading him open. Bucky can’t help clenching all over, and he doesn’t need Steve’s ragged exhale to know that he’s being watched there, that Steve’s got an eye on the helpless twitching of his hole.

A rough thumb presses against Bucky’s rim, rubbing gently. He’s got no excuse for the vicious bolt of need that tears a harried plea out of him.

“I know, I know,” Steve murmurs, and he sounds as composed as Bucky feels. “I’ve got you, honey.”

The endearment lands like a lump on Bucky’s gut. He used to like it, back when Steve called him pretty names and went sweet on him. Didn’t matter if it was before he railed Bucky through a wall or fetched him breakfast in bed, the words always wormed right into his heart. But this only reminds him of Steve looking at his wife and calling her honey with fond familiarity.

“Don’t,” Bucky chokes out. “Don’t call me that.”

Steve freezes, hand almost falling off Bucky. Even spread over the desk with his face buried in his arms, Bucky can tell the exact moment when Steve understands. His fingers dig briefly into the insides of Bucky’s cheeks, then smooth over the skin as if to soothe.

“Yeah.” His voice is gruff, apologetic. “I’m sorry.”

A gentle kiss is pressed right to Bucky’s hole. He jolts, pushing his ass back without even meaning to, but Steve’s already pulling back. The sounds of tearing plastic and slick on skin follow, but Bucky can’t concentrate on anything but that moment of fleeting intimacy. His mind keeps playing it over and over, Steve’s closed lips puckering gently against his hole.

You don’t just – Steve can’t just – what’s Bucky supposed to–

There are wet fingers pushing against his hole, and then Bucky’s caught up in a whole other distraction. Steve pushes on in, just the tip, tugging a little as if he’s testing the give. It’s nothing, certainly not compared to what Bucky likes to cram up his own ass, but something about it still makes Bucky’s eyes roll back in his head.

“More,” he demands breathlessly. “Don’t fuckin’ tease.”

“Christ.” Steve laughs, but he sounds hungry. “Demanding fuck, aren’t you?”

Bucky’s doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He shoves his body back instead, impaling himself on that finger and groaning out his approval. Steve’s quick to get on with it, never one to let Bucky pull one over him, least of all in the bedroom.

The finger pulls out of him, and it’s two that return, thrusting deep. Bucky clenches tight around the sudden stretch, eyes shut so tight that he sees white.

“Too much?” Steve taunts, idly fucking Bucky open with two fingers.

“Can barely feel it,” Bucky lies.

The smack on his ass makes him jerk and moan. Steve gives a considering hum, and Bucky half-expects to be spanked within an inch of his life and has about a second to curse at himself for the utter certainty that fuck, he’d let Steve do that and more, but all he gets is another prying shove of those two fingers and then another, his rim burning as it’s spread around three of Steve’s gigantic fingers.

Bucky eggs him on with short, breathy sounds he can’t keep in. He chews his lips raw but still lets Steve knows exactly what he’s doing to Bucky, and by the time Steve pulls his fingers out with any kind of finality, Bucky feels pried open and cracked to his soul.

The faint click of the condom case opening is a balm to the ache inside of him. Steve’s dick brushes against Bucky’s legs, hot and wet at the tip, and it makes him tremble.

“Fuck,” Steve snaps, anger and despair in his tone. “Buck, this is empty.”

Bucky doesn’t push himself off the desk. It’s partly because he’s not sure his knees won’t buckle but mostly, it’s Steve’s hand braced on the small of his back that’s keeping him down. But he does raise himself onto his elbows and looks over his shoulders. Steve’s holding the open case, brows furrowed into a deep scowl.

“What?” Bucky croaks out.

“It’s empty,” Steve repeats, turning the case to show Bucky.

“Fuck,” Bucky says numbly. He tries to remember when he used them, but his thoughts scutter away like alley rats. He lets his head fall back into the cradle of his arms. “ _Fuck_.”

Both of Steve’s hands are on him then, the touches soft and soothing. Bucky swallows back the sudden burning in his throat. In a minute, he’ll get off the desk and – and drop to his knees, something, get Steve off, get himself off, but for a second, he wallows in the wave of disappointment, and he knows, he does, that he won’t have this again, and that it’s bad enough already, but fucking hell–

The head of Steve’s cock presses against his hole, rubbing gentle and smearing precome along the rim.

Bucky’s head snaps up and he calls, shocked, “Steve!”

Steve cards his fingers through Bucky’s hair, something unbearably tender in the motion.

“Do you trust me?”

Oh, god.

“I barely know you,” Bucky whispers, head spinning.

“Fifteen years is a long time,” Steve says, quietly agreeing.

They stay like that for several long seconds. Time feels suspended. There’s heat coiled in Bucky’s gut and ice in his veins and voices in his head blaring about how fucking stupid this whole thing is.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and drops his head.

“Bucky?”

“Yes,” Bucky says into his arms, just loud enough to be heard. “You can – yes.”

Steve’s cockhead settles a little more firmly against his hole, pressing but not pushing inside.

“I don’t have anything,” Steve says. “I promise.”

Bucky turns his head so he can whisper his answer.

“Me too. Got tested a few months back. Haven’t fucked anyone since.”

Steve kisses his cheek. It’s an awkward angle, but Bucky still lurches into it, turning his head almost painfully to get Steve’s mouth on his. Steve’s lips curve into a smile against Bucky’s, and that really shouldn’t make his heart ache.

“Relax. I’ll take care of you, sweetheart,” he says, and this time, the endearment hits home.

Bucky shudders and sets his teeth to his forearm to muffle a needy whine. Then Steve starts pushing in, and there’s no muffling anything.

It’s – fuck, it’s as overwhelming as it looks, that maddening girth splitting Bucky into two. He throws his head back, claws at the desk, and doesn’t even feel sorry for the marks his metal fingers leave on the wood.

Steve stops, panting harshly, and Bucky feels stuffed _full_ , but he knows that Steve’s not fucking done yet. But he pets along Bucky’s back and strokes his hair. They’re both breathing hard, the noise of it loud in the room.

“More?” Steve asks, and the deep timbre of his voice gets Bucky hot and clenching.

“Yes,” he grits out. “Fuck, just – fuck me.”

Steve takes him at his words, pushes his entire fucking cock in with one, brutal snap of his hips. Bucky _howls_ , the sound cut short by Steve’s hand clamping over his mouth.

“Not soundproofed,” he says, but he’s moving as he does, swiveling his hips in short, frantic thrusts that don’t fuck Bucky so much as keep him spread wide open, speared on Steve’s cock.

It drives him crazy like nothing, Steve’s hand keeping him quiet and his cock grinding so deep. Bucky fucking writhes for him. His mouth’s open against Steve’s palm, and his own hot breath is suffocating him in the best of ways, turning his mind hazy, everything reduced to the searing heat of Steve in him, on him, over him.

It's worse when Steve stops playing around and fucks Bucky for real. He pulls out – and out and _out_ – and Bucky keens high in his throat. The noise is brutally silenced by the thrust that follows, Steve slamming in deep and vicious, robbing Bucky of breath and sense. Bucky’s got nothing to do but rock back and forth on Steve’s cock, clenching helplessly and whimpering into Steve’s hand. Bucky’s own dick’s an aching line of need between his legs, swaying with every thrust. It takes him a couple of tries to let go of his death grip on the table and reach for it, except he doesn’t get far before Steve knocks it away.

“Steve!”

Steve pulls out, just like that. The sudden emptiness is worse that the sting of his cockhead tugging free of the rim. Bucky sobs out a breath, and the soothing noises Steve makes fall on unhearing ears.

But he’s yanked upright then, Steve manhandling his body with mindblowing ease. Bucky sinks into the heat of the body plastered to his back and limply follows the fingers that grasp his chin and turn his head for Steve’s waiting mouth. The kiss makes his toes curl, gets him panting around Steve’s tongue.

“Turn around,” Steve says, and Bucky does, stumbling lightly on legs that already feel fucked numb.

Steve’s gentle when he arranges Bucky on his back on the desk, ass on the edge and legs over Steve’s shoulders. Bucky takes in the looming mountain of a man between his legs and damn near bites through his own lip.

Steve slides into him in one, steady stroke. Bucky can’t help his shuddering cry, and just like that, there are fingers in his mouth, plugging him up as soundly as Steve’s cock in his ass. Bucky moans around them, high and shocked, but the noise trails off into faint little whimpers when Steve starts fucking him. There’s no warm-up this time, no grinding build-up, just brutal thrusts that make Bucky’s eyes roll back in his head.

He sucks on Steve’s fingers almost desperately, letting the heat and salt of them ground him. His whole body feels hot and molten, like he’ll melt around the heat of Steve and just flow into him.

Steve’s other hand is clenched tight around Bucky’s hip, keeping in place for the fucking and leaving finger-shaped bruises. It’s too much and unspeakably perfect.

“Bucky,” Steve gasps. Bucky pries his eyes open and looks at Steve, at flushed cheeks and hair dark with sweat. “I’m gonna – fuck, baby, can I?”

Bucky’s nodding before he even understands what Steve’s asking for. Steve can have anything, everything, and then he realizes what Steve wants, and it gets Bucky whining around the fingers in his mouth.

Steve closes his eyes, bares his teeth, and fucks Bucky harder, faster, slamming in deep and hard.

And then it’s a flood of heat, filling Bucky up and fucking dripping out of him as Steve comes and comes and fucks Bucky through it with frantic, erratic thrusts. He moans Bucky’s name, and that also goes right to Bucky’s aching cock.

Steve stills with his cock soft and half inside Bucky. A slight shift is all it takes for it to slip out, pulling pained groans out of them both. The come that gushes out of his hole in its wake makes Bucky’s eyes cross.

He tries to reach for his cock again, but Steve still doesn’t let him.

“Please,” Bucky begs. He’s never needed dignity when fucking Steve. “C’mon, I need it.”

“I know, I know,” Steve croons. He tugs Bucky up again, forcing his shaking legs to hold his weight. “Lemme, Buck.”

“Wha–”

Steve drops to his knees, and Bucky didn’t think he could get any harder, but _fuck_.

Steve puts that pretty mouth on Bucky’s cock, slides three fingers into his come-drenched ass, and it’s short, sweet slide to hell from there. Bucky lasts a whooping two minutes before he hurls headfirst into his orgasm, coming down Steve’s throat and clenching around the fingers tormenting his prostate. Steve sucks him gently through it all, then pulls back. He looks up at Bucky and licks his lip, not even hiding the satisfied glint in his eyes.

He rises to his feet with more grace than a man who was on his knees sucking cock has the right to have. It does things to Bucky, goes right to his hindbrain, and he bites his lips so he won’t say something embarrassing.

It hasn’t quite sunk in yet. The shame and the fear are held at bay by Steve’s reaching hands and warm mouth. He tastes like Bucky’s come, and god, that brings back memories.

They can’t kiss and shut out the world forever though. Steve’s the one who pulls back, the smile on his mouth faint and wistful. He says nothing, utters neither apology nor excuse, and Bucky finds himself grateful for that as they dress in subdued silence.

Steve hands Bucky his gun. Their fingers brush, and it’s absurd that such a simple touch should be so electric after everything they just did, but it is, and Bucky doesn’t know what to do with that.

He’s stupidly relieved when his phone blares to life with Tony’s ringtone.

They both jump though. Bucky’s got his shirt and pants back on, but his jacket is on the floor. He fishes the phone from inside the pocket and makes eye contact with Steve’s exposed collarbone as he listens absently to Tony say he’s done with the kids and jeez, for a man who didn’t want to visit his old friend, Bucky’s sure spent a lot of time with said old friend.

“I’m coming,” Bucky cuts in before Tony says something that’ll hit too close to home. “Gimme ten.”

He hangs up.

Steve has finished dressing, but he’s lost the elegant composure he sported when Bucky barged in here. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are too bright, and his lips are so damn red.

But that’s nothing compared to Bucky’s state. It takes him two whole minutes to tame his hair into something presentable, all the while Steve watches on like he’d like to offer his help but isn’t sure if he can, if he should. Bucky doesn’t know either. He looks at his reflection on Steve’s glass-front bookshelf and adjusts his collar _just so_ to hide the hickeys. He smooths down the crinkles in his dress and rubs vigorously at his face in hopes that he’ll just look tired, not well-fucked.

It's hard. His body’s pleasantly thrumming still. There’s come leaking out of his ass, ruining his underwear. And with every step he takes, he’s reminded of Steve’s touch.

“I gotta go,” he says, finally looking Steve in the eye.

Steve nods jerkily.

“Tell Tony I said hi,” is all he says.

Bucky backs away towards the door, unable to bring himself to just turn and leave. He has to, eventually. He unlocks the door and can’t help glancing over his shoulder. Steve’s still looking at him, blue eyes burning Bucky down.

The wood blocks the sight from view, but it’s already etched forever into Bucky’s mind, his heart.

-

Tony knows something’s amiss. Maria certainly does. But both of them know when to leave Bucky alone and when to push. He can still see Tony itching to ask, but fifty-something years of life has taught the man a thing or two.

Bucky goes home instead of staying at the Tower. He strips naked in front of the bathroom mirror and stares at his reflection as if it houses a stranger. There are marks on his neck, red and livid. His hips sport bruises in the shape of long, grasping fingers.

Bucky’s body a canvas, Steve the artist – some things don’t change.

The next day, he gets tested. The results come back negative, same as always. Steve wasn’t lying. Bucky didn’t think he was, and the proof glares at him like an accusation.

The tender, bruised feeling inside of him lasts for days.

-

Life goes on. The universe doesn’t give a shit that Bucky fucked a married man.

He wishes he could say the same about himself, but it eats at him. It’s not just the act of it. Bucky can say he’s done things that are objectively much worse. He was in the US Army for fuck’s sake.

But nothing’s ever seen simple with Steve Rogers in the equation. Bucky finds himself staring at a blank chat multiple times a week, fingers hovering uselessly over the keys.

 _Hi_ , he types once.

 _What the fuck_ , another time.

 _I think we need to talk_ flows out of his fingertips often.

He never sends any of it. Steve doesn’t text him either. And maybe the frequency with which he dwells on the incident fades as the weeks crawl by, but that’s sheer self-preservation. The intensity of it never wavers, a guilty mix of arousal and anger slamming into Bucky whenever his mind wanders to that day. He finds that he can barely remember the details of Steve’s office but that his body clings desperately to memories of the polished smoothness of wood under his belly and the searing heat of skin sliding slick against skin.

He must keep it off his face well enough. Tony doesn’t probe much after that first day. Bucky thinks he did a decent job of passing it off as the inherent oddness of reconnecting with an ex after such a long time. He does realize, eventually, that the whole thing could end up as one of those incidents in life that sweep through you and leave you unmoored, but just for a little while. No explanations, no justifications; they happen, and you’ll never forget, but you can hardly spend your whole life haunted by one affair, no matter how surreal those stolen hours feel, no matter how stubbornly the scent of his flesh clings to the insides of your nostrils.

It's just that the realization comes a minute too late and by then, Steve Rogers is knocking on Bucky’s door after a month of radio silence, and Bucky’s stumbling back on shaky legs to let him in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think <3


	2. can't imagine the violence (the rage and the love in my madness)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s forty-three, not twenty-eight, and he survived Steve once, but he doesn’t want to find out whether he can do it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand done. Goodbye, my emotional dumpster fire fic. You did help me when I needed it.

Steve’s soaked in sweat, and there’s a moment where Bucky thinks he must have got caught in the rain before he realizes it’s not raining outside and that it’s sweat that’s making Steve’s shirt stick to his torso and dripping from his hair.

“The hell happened to you?” is all he can think to ask.

“Ran here,” Steve says. He looks on the verge of collapse. “From Stark Tower.”

For a long second, Bucky just stares. Then it hits, what Steve said.

“Fucking _hell_ , Steve.”

Steve just stands there, sweating and panting. A part of Bucky screeches at him in reprimand as he herds Steve towards the couch, but he ignores it, focusing on Steve. He’s flushed, a sweat-soaked mess, but Bucky doesn’t think he’s in danger of – of his fucking heart giving out. Jesus.

He fetches Steve a glass of water and backtracks halfway out of the kitchen to grab a whole damn carton of orange juice to go with it.

Steve takes the water gratefully. Bucky stands there and watches him drink. His head’s crowded with too many thoughts but each of them slips out of his grasp when he tries to reach for them.

It feels like an eternity crawls by before he manages to speak.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Steve pins Bucky with those damnably blue eyes.

“I told Sharon.”

Bucky doesn’t collapse on the floor but only barely. He makes it to the couch and maybe it’s a mistake, sitting so close to Steve that the heat of his skin buffets Bucky in gentle waves, but he can’t bring himself to move away. He can’t move at all.

“What?”

His voice is a faint whisper, barely audible to even himself. Steve hunches in on himself like the word hit him like a blow. Bucky fears for the carton he’s squeezing in one oversized hand.

“She was, uh – she was out of the country. For the last month and half. Communications blackout. Wouldn’t have told her over the phone anyway. She came home yesterday. And I told her.” Steve takes a deep breath and turns to Bucky. Lines of exhaustion stand prominent on his face, especially around his eyes, but there’s no denying their scorching intensity when they meet Bucky’s stare. “I was always going to tell her, Bucky.”

“Why didn’t you text?”

Bucky doesn’t know why he blurts that out. He doesn’t mean to, not really. But it’s not like he can deny that’s what he has been thinking for a whole month. 

Steve’s smile is a small, bitter twist.

“Wanted to tell her first. It was only fair.”

Bucky sighs explosively and slumps back against the couch. He doesn’t mean to tilt an inch closer to Steve, but he doesn’t move away either.

It would have been too much to just assume Steve lost that streak of brutal honesty sometime in the last fifteen years, that marriage and a stable career turned him into just one of the many middle-aged men with their white lies and black hearts.

But no, of course not. Always so goddamn noble, Steve fucking Rogers, and a martyr when he wasn’t.

“What did she say?” Bucky asks dully.

“Asked if it was a student.”

“Fuck.” When Bucky looks at Steve, he finds him staring blankly down at the juice. “Have you?”

Steve stares at Bucky and has the audacity to look hurt.

“Bucky, I would never.”

“I wouldn’t know, would I?” Bucky throws back sharply. “Didn’t take you long to get into my pants.”

Steve’s anger is visible in the telltale tightening of his jaw. The man Bucky knew would have squared the fuck up, verbally or physically, and he wouldn’t have been gentle or delicate about it.

But this Steve, this half-stranger, takes a deep breath and deflates like a pricked balloon.

“Fair enough,” he says, and Bucky hates that he can’t stand the defeated note in Steve’s voice even after all this time. “But I’ve never. Bucky, you have to believe me. Before you, I’ve never – in thought or deed, I wasn’t unfaithful.”

Bucky doesn’t have to believe him at all. But he does.

“Alright. What then? Doubt that it made anything better, me being your ex from fifteen years ago.”

“She remembered you,” Steve says, and Bucky takes a second to put that in context. “Think it’s because I’ve – I’ve talked about you. Before. She knew you by name.”

“Jesus.”

“Didn’t look so surprised then,” Steve murmurs, and he’s not looking at Bucky anymore, doesn’t seem to be talking to him either. “Said we should go for marriage counselling.”

Bucky snorts a laugh. It’s an ugly, humorless sound.

“Think that’ll actually help?”

Steve just shrugs. Bucky has to physically stifle the urge to reach out and touch him.

“Why did you come here?”

“Went to the Tower. Tony gave me this address. I – he might have questions. I’m sorry.”

“He’s had questions since that day in your college.” And Bucky will have to worry about that later, but fuck, not now. “I’ll handle it. It’s just – I mean, Steve, why are you _here_?”

Steve looks at him, a puppy-eyed mess.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” he says, voice breaking, spearing Bucky right in the heart.

When Bucky was young, no more than fourteen and already head over heels in love with Steve fucking Rogers, Winnifred Barnes took a long, hard look at a picture Bucky taped to his wall, one of him and Steve at Coney Island, and said, “Be careful with that boy.”

She didn’t elaborate then or ever, but Bucky had plenty of time to learn – over and over and over – what she meant.

It’s not that Steve’s a bad guy. But it’s hell of a thing, being caught in his orbit.

“You–” Bucky’s voice fails him. He clears his throat and tries again. “You should go shower. You should – yeah.”

“Okay.”

The subdued agreement makes Bucky wary. But Steve’s not even looking at him, staring unseeingly down at the juice. He fingers part with the carton limply when Bucky takes it out of his hand. And maybe Bucky shouldn’t, not when he knows he’s got to nip this in the bud, but he reaches down for Steve too. His heart breaks a little when Steve lets himself be pulled up and led to the en suite, shuffling behind Bucky with a lost expression.

Bucky all but shoves Steve inside and says, “I’ll find you some clothes.”

He flees then and doesn’t go back to the bedroom until he hears the shower running. He quickly sorts through his closet and finds an oversized tee and a pair of loose sweatpants. He lays them out on the bed before beating a strategic retreat to the kitchen.

Bucky doesn’t know how long he stands there, bowed over the granite counter. When he snaps back to animation, it’s because of the presence of another body in the room.

He turns around, and that’s a fucking mistake, just another to add to the long list of them this year has brought.

Steve looks – the shirt’s too tight around the shoulders and loose around the waist, the pants show his ankles, and it’s nothing too obvious, but Bucky would have to be dead not to be affected by the sight of Steve in his fucking clothes. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight either until fifteen years ago. The look on Steve’s face as he picks at the sleeves and tugs at the hem says he doesn’t have the luxury of forgetting either.

The past is a live, pulsing thing, right there in the room with them.

Steve crosses the room in a few long strides, and Bucky knows, then and there, what’s going to happen.

There’s no use fighting fate, but this isn’t fate, just human error. Doesn’t make the fight any less futile.

“Thought you wanted to salvage your marriage,” Bucky hisses as he’s crowded against the counter. The venom in his voice almost masks the supple sweetness with which his body melts into Steve’s. “Steve, think about this.”

“Maybe I don’t want to salvage it,” Steve says. His eyes flicker from Bucky’s mouth to his eyes, then back down again. “All I want is to know one thing. Do you want this? Want me?”

Bucky, in his entire life, has only ever had one answer for that. Even when the two of them called it off, it was not for lack of _want_.

“Never had a lick of sense when it came to you,” Bucky says, biting out the words as he sinks his nails into Steve’s clothed shoulders. “My ma fucking warned me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, my mum said the same about you.”

And then they’re kissing, frantic and on the edge of violent.

Steve pushes his tongue into Bucky’s mouth and slips both hands under his sweater, palms groping at bare skin. It’s dizzying, the hunger in each movement, and Bucky tries and fails to think of the last time he felt so wanted before Steve’s teeth close around his tongue and his thumbs find Bucky’s nipples, rendering all thought hazy.

He's hefted onto the kitchen counter with just enough care not to knock anything down. Bucky clings to the edges and watches dazedly as Steve grabs the hem of his sweater and rucks it up to Bucky’s armpit. Steve swears, rough and breathless, when he looks at what he’s exposed. It gets Bucky squirming, the heat in Steve’s eyes and the throatiness of his voice, but it’s Steve burying his face between Bucky’s pecs that makes him blush like a fucking teenager.

“Steve!”

Steve just rubs his big, fuzzy face all along Bucky’s chest. His beard is prickly in a nice way, but every errant brush of those bristles over Bucky’s nipples pulls embarrassing sounds out of him. Steve notices, of course he does, and does it again – and again – on purpose, grinning like Bucky’s helpless whimpering is the best sound he’s ever heard.

“You were always sensitive here,” Steve says, straightening up but not sparing Bucky’s tits. “Remember that time when we were 16?”

Before Bucky can even try to remember what Steve’s talking about, fingers close around both buds, tugging none too gently. Bucky whines, throwing arms and legs around Steve’s mountain of a body and clinging for dear life.

Steve eases up on the assault but doesn’t let go of Bucky’s nipples.

“Well?” he asks. When Bucky just looks pathetically down at him, he grins, the devil in the detail. “You came just from me playing with ‘em. Shot all over yourself, made a fuckin’ mess.”

The memory slams into Bucky. The immediacy of sensation has been lost over time, but Steve does too good a job reminding him by pinching and rolling Bucky’s nipples relentlessly. Then he’s lowering his face again, mouth closing over one, abused bud, and Bucky loses his fucking mind. He rakes his nails through Steve’s hair, digs metal fingers bruisingly hard into his shoulder, but Steve’s as stubborn a bastard as he ever was, and if anything, he’s become better at using tongue and teeth to turn Bucky into a whimpering mess.

He's begging before he knows it, writhing in a cage of heat.

Steve takes pity on him, but only once he’s had his fill of Bucky’s chest. When he pulls back, both nipples are red and puffy and the skin surrounding them is littered with bite marks.

“Goddamn animal,” Bucky gasps, the sight going to his dick as violently as the wet heat of Steve’s mouth.

Steve just grins, oozing smugness.

“Lube,” he demands, tugging Bucky off the counter.

“Bedroom,” Bucky says, making an absent gesture in the direction of the room as he busies himself with stripping Steve. It’s a pity to see him out of Bucky’s clothes, but the payoff is damn well worth it.

“Too far,” Steve decides, and Bucky doesn’t voice his agreement, but he also doesn’t stop Steve from fetching the nearest bottle of oil or coaxing Bucky out of his clothes and onto all fours on the floor, and that doesn’t leave much room for interpretation.

He's being opened up with goddamn sunflower oil, and Bucky takes a moment out of moaning like a whore to ponder how surreal it is, this whole messy business.

“Can I?” Steve asks, cockhead nudging Bucky’s hole like he knows there’s only one answer to that.

Bucky wants to say no, just to spite the cocky bastard, but then Steve shifts back an inch and that slick heat disappears, and the despairing whine that slips out of Bucky shocks even him.

“Yes, yes, please,” he gasps, lowering his torso to raise his ass a little more, as blatant as invitation as he can manage.

Steve swears a blue streak, Bucky’s name a reverent constant amidst inventive expletives. He’s not slow and careful when he fucks into Bucky, just slides in like it’s his right, like _of course_ Bucky’s body is going to just give it up to the plundering heat of him.

And it does, fuck, it does.

He’s stuffed full and barely balanced on trembling limbs when Steve leans over to press a soft, close-mouthed kiss to the nape of his neck.

Bucky blinks tears out of his eyes and tells himself it’s just the intensity of it all.

“Move,” he manages to say, wrangling his hoarse voice into some semblance of coherence. “Come on, Steve, fuck me.”

“Yeah,” Steve says gruffly. He pulls out, just like that, only the head inside now, leaving Bucky stretched wide and achingly hollow at the same time. “You can be as loud as you want this time, Buck. Lemme hear you.”

Those words barely have time to hit home before Steve slams back in.

Bucky’s whole body jolts, and he’s as loud as Steve told him to be, crying out with every thrust, whining and sobbing when Steve’s cock slides in just right. He hits Bucky’s prostate on every other thrust, the angle shifting too cleverly for it to be coincidence, and if Bucky could form words, he’d cuss at Steve, but all he’s got the air for are breathless shouts that are ruthlessly fucked out of him.

Steve’s got him in a bruising grip, fingers carving marks over the ones that faded weeks ago. It’s nothing compared to the way he’s bruising Bucky up inside, making him burn around the cock ramming itself deep like it wants to leave him aching and broken forever.

Bucky’s dick bounces between his legs with every brutal thrust, and he wants to reach for it but can’t, doesn’t trust just one arm to hold him up. But then Steve’s reaching around to wrap those obscenely long fingers around it, and Bucky’s eyes roll gratefully back into his head.

He comes embarrassingly fast, but so does Steve, spilling hot against Bucky’s clenching walls. They ride it out together, panting and shuddering. Steve doesn’t pull out afterwards. Tilts his hips forward instead, keeping his spent cock firmly inside Bucky’s wet ass, and Bucky’s last remaining brain cell judges him lazily for liking it so damn much.

But Steve has to move eventually. Bucky whimpers, at the loss and the sting both, and lets his shaky limbs finally collapse. The cold floor’s not the most forgiving of surfaces, biting cruelly into his overheated flesh, but he doesn’t have will to move. And anyway, it’s sort of nice when Steve’s hands start wandering over his back and legs, moving with clumsy appreciation rather than any real intent.

At least there’s no intent until a couple of his fingers slide down Bucky’s crack.

“Watcha doing?” Bucky mumbles, cheek smushed against the floor.

Steve just makes a soft, considering noise before he slips two fingers into Bucky’s used, sloppy hole.

Bucky keens, high and shocked, whole body jolting as if electrified. Steve doesn’t – he doesn’t do anything. Just keeps his fingers there, the pads pressed achingly gently to warm, yielding muscle.

“Feels nice,” he tells Bucky, voice a sweet murmur. “All soft and used, Buck.”

Jesus _wept_.

Steve’s thumb strokes idly along Bucky’s swollen rim, the motions almost soothing. Bucky tries not to clench up or move back or do anything, but he feels hungry for it even with his body so spent.

“Steve,” he calls, the name muffled by his teeth sunk into his lower lip.

“Sweetheart,” Steve croons. He sounds like he’s smiling. “Can I?”

Bucky doesn’t quite know what he’s asking for. He mumbles an affirmative anyway.

He expects – fingers, maybe, more of them. He gets a few seconds of painful emptiness and then Steve’s gigantic hands spreading his cheeks wide. Then he – he fucking licks it up, tongue swiping wet and dirty over Bucky’s hole, over the come dripping out of it.

Bucky’s so shocked that no noise comes out of him, mouth open and silent.

Then Steve licks _in_ , and the dam breaks.

Steve makes a startled noise when Bucky fucking howls, but even that vibrates against his hole, gets Bucky clawing at the floor like that’ll drive some composure into his trembling body. He’s got no leverage like this, flat on his stomach with Steve between his legs, eating him out with sloppy enthusiasm. All he can do is sob out mangled versions of Steve’s name and shudder under the relentless twists of his tongue.

And Steve – fuck, Steve makes it no secret that he likes it, Bucky crying out and at his mercy. He rubs his beard against the soft skin between Bucky’s cheeks until it’s numb and smarting in turns, then licks back into him, eating his own come out of Bucky’s ass.

It's fucking filthy, and Bucky’s sure his face has turned a permanent red, but damn if he’s not into it, every nerve thrumming like a live wire.

“Lemme fuck you again,” Steve says, barely raising his head off Bucky’s ass to voice his demand, and Bucky’s a broken record when it comes to this man, gasping yes at the slightest nudge. He gets his legs under him, knees shaky as they take his weight. He doesn’t bother lifting his upper half, too boneless to do more than rest his head on folded arms and wait to be fucked again.

Steve slides home so easy this time; Bucky’s wet with come and oil, loose from cock and tongue. A raw, tender feeling dominates as his bruised walls pulse with mingled pain and pleasure. Steve pauses once he’s bottomed out, running his hands over Bucky’s ass and thighs as if he’s admiring the view.

“Pervert,” Bucky mumbles, face still hot and gut still tight from the memory of Steve’s mouth.

The comment gets him a swat on the ass, and joke’s on Steve because Bucky just shudders all over, pleasure spiking up his spine.

Steve whistles.

“Look at that,” he says, voice edged with something Bucky can’t name but tugs at his gut all the same. “Think you like it, Buck.”

Bucky has no answer that will spare his dignity so he keeps his mouth shut and clenches around Steve, tight and deliberate, and maybe it’s a double-edged sword with the way it makes Bucky’s blood turn to fire in his veins, but that’s worth it because Steve curses and swivels his hips like he wants to slide in deep, so deep till he’s in Bucky’s skin. He slaps Bucky’s ass again, and this time, the tightening of his walls is utterly involuntary, as is the high-pitched moan Bucky can’t hold in.

“You do like that, huh?” Steve says, and he sounds as fond as he’s amused. “Really haven’t changed, have you?”

Bucky’s got a metal arm and a wholly different brand of nightmares than the ones Steve’s familiar with that argue otherwise. But when Steve phrases it like that, tongue caressing the words dirtily, Bucky can only give one response.

“Please,” he says, shoving his ass further back and groaning when Steve’s hips do a filthy grind. “More, Steve.”

“All you had to was ask, baby,” Steve says, and Bucky’s got a thing or two to say to that, but all that comes out of his mouth when Steve’s meatloaf of a palm rails down in his ass are weak, throaty cries.

Steve starts fucking then and doesn’t stop hitting, raining down blows on Bucky’s ass and thighs even as he fucks him open with short, claiming thrusts that never let up, keeping Bucky overwhelmingly full for every moment of it. The pain is a warm, blanketing thing, spreading out in throbbing waves from where Steve’s palm is painting bruises on his skin. Bucky loses himself in it, breaking apart in the gentlest of ways, all of him reduced to the heat and the hurt.

His climax washes over him without warning, leaves him moaning into the crook of his elbow as he tightens almost painfully around Steve’s plunging cock. Steve swears and stops spanking him, grabbing the abused flesh instead and using it as soft handholds for him to fuck Bucky through his orgasm. It’s right on the edge of too much, everything blending into a barrage of blinding sensation. Bucky can’t stop shaking, can’t stop whimpering broken versions of Steve’s name.

“Ssh, baby.” Steve’s voice penetrates the pleasure-filled haze of his mind. “Just a little more, almost there. That’s it, fuck you’re – always took me so well, sweetheart, better than anything I’ve ever felt.”

There will be time, later, to go over those words with a fine-toothed comb and try to suss out what Steve really meant. Now, it just washes over Bucky, soft praise that curls sweetly in his chest and makes everything warm and gold-hued.

Steve comes with Bucky’s name on his lips.

He’s gentle when he pulls out of Bucky and careful to not just fall on him. He cuddles up to Bucky immediately though, kissing his neck and nosing into his hair with a sated sigh which Bucky echoes.

Unfortunately, even two orgasms don’t make the floor all that comfortable, especially not when you’ve got come in and on you and an ass that’s throbbing red-hot with the imprints of your lover’s hand.

“Bed,” Bucky declares definitively, only to then spend a good five minutes contemplating verticality.

Steve’s silent through all five of those minutes, but before any kind of fear can lodge itself in Bucky, he pushes himself up with a laborious groan. Seeing Steve roll his shoulders and wince in pain as he picks himself off the floor gives Bucky a pang of solidarity. Sure, they’re both exceptionally fit forty-somethings, but bones these days are fucking assholes even without half a lifetime of scarring violence – literal and otherwise – to contribute to the creaks and aches.

Steve extends a hand to Bucky, who takes it gladly, letting Steve pull him up. He doesn’t feel bad for leaning on him either. Only one of them got their ass reamed twice in a row.

To be fair, Steve looks as happy as a clam to have Bucky half-slung over his shoulders as they shuffle to the bathroom.

“You’re staying the night,” Bucky says as they crawl under the covers. It’s not quite a question, but it’s closer to a desperate demand than any kind of suave confidence.

Steve grins at him. He’s almost glowing, and Bucky doesn’t know what to do with that, but he knows he likes it, maybe a bit too much.

“If you’ll have me,” Steve says and gets shoved for his trouble, not that that stops him for long. He bounces back with an even wider grin, and it’s fucking infectious, to Bucky’s considerable consternation.

They settle down, close and touching in places, a kind of half-cuddle. Bucky wouldn’t mind melting against Steve, but Steve seems intent on just looking at Bucky, head propped up on a bent arm as his eyes drift over whatever’s visible of Bucky.

Bucky allows it silently, not quite sure what to say, curious to know what the hell’s going on through Steve’s head but too wary to actually ask. He doesn’t know how long it is before Steve speaks.

“I like your hair,” he says. He reaches out, wrapping a brown strand around two of his fingers. “It suits you.”

Bucky bites his lips, even more uncertain than he was when Steve kissed him in his office.

“Thank you?” he offers tentatively.

Steve gives the hair a good tug, and Bucky’s eyes flutter in appreciation.

“Everything suits you,” Steve says, shocking Bucky into keeping his eyes screwed shut. “This life you’ve built. I’m happy for you, Bucky.”

Bucky doesn’t cry, but he wants to, a little.

“Thank you,” he says again, voice shaky but the sentiment sure.

A kiss is pressed to his forehead. Then another, lower, over each closed eyelid. Bucky must make some noise because Steve lurches back as if burned, letting go of his hair too.

“No,” Bucky gasps. “Come – come back. It’s alright.”

None of this is anywhere close to alright, objectively speaking, but when Steve sidles close and wraps his warm bulk around Bucky, he aches to believe it is.

  


-

  


In the morning, Steve dresses in the clothes he wore last night and lingers in Bucky’s doorway for far longer than is in any way subtle.

He’s a sore sight. His shirt is crinkled and still damp in places. The jeans are fine only because denim probably will outlive humanity. The man wearing them still manages to be unbearably beautiful.

They kiss for a long, long time behind a closed door. It doesn’t go any further, and there’s a sharp ache in Bucky’s chest because if this was only sex, if he knew for sure Steve only wanted his body, then he’d – he’d still feel like shit, probably, but he’d know.

Hope, Bucky learned a long time ago, is ten times more lethal than any amount of fear.

“I’ll text,” Steve promises for the third time.

Bucky doesn’t believe him, not really. _Still married_ , he tells himself. _He’s going for counselling, not divorce._

“Sure, Steve.”

Steve’s face falls, and Bucky tries to rally himself, be exactly as cold as he needs to be.

“Goodbye, Buck,” Steve says, all soft and sad, and fucking damn it but Bucky has to kiss him goodbye.

  


-

  


There’s something mindlessly soothing about watching Tony work.

He’s not very active in SI these days. Pepper handles most of that. Tony’s a househusband with philanthropist tendencies, but he spends his househusband hours alternating between entertaining his daughter and tinkering with things that probably will not gain sentience and try to take over the world.

Bucky likes the workshop. He never really lost that marvel for science-fiction, and anything Tony touches has a tendency to end up like the stuff from those books he used to eat right up as a kid. And some of the tiny helper robots have a great liking for Bucky’s arm, and it’s kinda cute watching Dum-E try to romance the thing with motor oil and scrap metal.

Today, though, even two whole hours of watching Tony poke at something that looks eerily like a metal skeleton isn’t enough to pull Bucky out of his own mind. He feels like he’s waiting for something, and it’s almost a relief when Tony puts down his tools and asks, “We gonna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” Bucky asks for lack of a better response.

Tony shoves his goggles into his hair and pins Bucky with the full force of his incredulity.

“Really,” he says flatly. “Alright, I’ll bite. Why’d Mr. Rogers come here last night looking like he went ten rounds with a punching bag and lost?”

“Why’d you give him my address?” Bucky retorts. “Pretty sure that violates some protocol.”

It’s always a pleasure to see Tony sputter. Pity it never lasts long.

“I – you – c’mon, it’s _Steve_. Guy’s like – I don’t know, the human embodiment of the world’s most dignified golden retriever.” Tony turns serious very quickly, straightening up from his habitual slouch. “Did he pull any shit with you? I thought – I mean, I can totally get you another apartment, it’s fine, and if he’s like some stalker asshole ex, then – but he’s married, and those two seem pretty happily settled. Golden white couple, like literally–”

“We fucked.”

Tony’s mouth doesn’t snap shut so much as hang unattractively open.

“What?’

“We fucked last night,” Bucky says with great relish, _golden couple_ ringing in his head. “Steve and me.”

“But he’s married.”

Bucky shrugs, far more cavalier than he feels.

Tony sits down.

“Damn,” he whistles after a long pause. “Never pegged you for a homewrecker, Barnes.”

Tony has said worse things to him. It’s usually not on purpose, and he’s become a lot better at managing his brain-to-mouth filter. Bucky chants these things to himself as he forces his fists to unclench and his breathing to even out.

Besides, it’s true, what Tony said. It’s true.

“Funny,” Bucky says, but it’s not funny at all. “Neither did I.”

Tony grimaces.

“Yikes. Sorry. I mean, it’s not like I can judge, right?” Tony makes a weird, spread-armed gesture that Bucky translates as _I, too, have fucked my fair share of people I shouldn’t have fucked, married men among them_ , and it’s not like Bucky’s reaching either. Tony does have a colorful, morally dubious sexual history.

“Yeah, well,” is all Bucky can manage.

Tony keeps staring at him. Bucky looks carefully at where his brows meet, maintaining the illusion of eye contact.

“Never pegged him for the type either,” Tony says after a pause. “Steve’s a good guy. Probably some vigilante superhero in some other life, _that_ good.”

Bucky snorts.

“Trust me, I know.”

“Who made the first move?”

Bucky would be well within his rights to tell Tony to eat a bag of dicks, but the truth is snapping out of his mouth before he can rein it in.

“He kissed me first.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Tony whistles. And then he perks up like he just remembered something. “Y’know, I’d be careful. Mrs. Rogers isn’t the kind of woman you cheat on.”

“Carter-Rogers,” Bucky dully corrects. “She knows. They’re – Steve said they’re going for marriage counselling.”

“That’s a death knell if there ever was one,” Tony says, almost to himself. “Guess this means you’re not mad at me for giving him your address?”

Bucky shakes his head, a humorless grin pulling at his lips.

“It’s fine. Least of my problems. And Tony – you can’t tell anyone.”

“Why, I’d never!” At Bucky’s unimpressed glare, Tony huffs and says, “You know I won’t. You’re my friends, both of you. And you know, you’re entitled your disastrous decisions. Would hate to be a hypocrite and stop you.”

“Thanks. I think.”

Silence falls, more thoughtful than awkward.

Predictably, Tony’s the one who breaks it.

“You know, I’ve known Steve for what five, six, years? Never saw him as – never saw him the way he was last night. Man was a mess. Desperate too, you could see it.” Tony pauses expectantly, but Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that so he says nothing. Tony continues. “And you, I’ve known a hella lot longer. Meant what I said. Never thought I’d see you like this.”

Bucky waits for Tony to add something, maybe pass judgement despite insisting he won’t. But that’s all he seems to have to say. He doesn’t go back to work, but he starts randomly rearranging things on the table, giving Bucky space without moving an inch.

It’s that, more than anything, that prompts Bucky to speak.

“I thought he was the love of my life.” He doesn’t look at Tony. Can’t. “A long time ago. And it didn’t – we didn’t last, but I never found anyone else I thought that about either. It was fine, you know? After a point, I figured – so what if Steve was the love of my life? Didn’t mean we were meant to work out. It was good, what we had. It was great. I had him that long. Maybe soulmates aren’t meant to last. I was okay with it. Made my peace.”

Tony says nothing for a long time, which is so unlike him that Bucky cautiously lifts his eyes. He finds Tony staring down at his table, brows furrowed in thought. When he raises his gaze to Bucky’s, he’s more solemn than Bucky has ever seen him.

“Did you?’

That cuts deep. Bucky closes his eyes.

“I thought I did.”

They lapse into silence again. Tony resumes his tinkering. Bucky just looks blankly at his shoes, last night and the day at the office running through his head, flashes of images he can’t quite hold on to, the same way he couldn’t hold on to Steve when it mattered.

“What now?” Tony asks after a while.

“I don’t know.”

Tony hums, thoughtful in a way that’s honestly terrifying in this context. When Bucky’s phone buzzes in his pocket, he takes it out more for a distraction than out of any real interest.

He finds seven messages waiting for him. Only one’s recent. He didn’t even notice the earlier ones.

They’re all from Steve.

  


With the counsellor  
11:15  


He’s saying we can fix this  
11:47

Bullshit  
11:49

Fuck this was a bad idea  
12:08

Sorry  
12:30

Got a class in half an hour. Honestly thinking of crashing in the office  
Shouldn’t go home  
13:32

Tell me to shut uo and I will okay  
*up  
13:57

  


Bucky stares at the messages for a long time. Steve’s not online anymore. A glance at the timestamps says his class would have started by now.

An idea bursts to life, terrible from its very conception. But then, how’s that any different from this whole clusterfuck?

“Tony?” Bucky calls quietly. “Can I have the afternoon off?”

  


-

  


When Bucky knocks on Steve’s office door, he’s half-hoping that Steve’s still in class. Or that he changed his mind and did go home. He knows himself well enough to know he’ll be disappointed by either of those scenarios, but that’s for the best, probably.

“Come in.”

Steve’s deep timbre penetrates the wood easily. Bucky fights down a shiver and opens the door. He locks it behind him, and this time, he’s only too aware of doing it.

Steve looks up with a genial smile that freezes on his face when he catches sight of Bucky. It makes Bucky try and back up a step, except that there’s nowhere to go so he just ends up flattening himself against the door.

“I – I just,” he sputters, something bitter clawing up his throat. “I’ll go.”

Steve almost knocks his chair over in his haste to stand up.

“Don’t,” he calls, panicked. “Christ, please, don’t. Stay. I was just surprised, Buck. I’m so glad to see you. Please stay.”

Bucky stops blindly fumbling with the doorknob. Stays. Stares at Steve and tries to find truth on his face. Finds, instead, a measure of vindication in the relief splashed across his features.

Steve walks around his desk and leans on it. There’s an invitation in the pose that Bucky’s sorely tempted to accept, but he doesn’t. He stays by the door, no longer plastered defensively to it.

“How’d it go?” he asks.

“Terrible.” Steve’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Expected that.”

“You’re really going to crash here tonight?”

Steve rubs his neck with a grimace and the faintest flush on his cheeks.

“Nah. I couldn’t. It’s fine. The house is pretty big. We both wanted our own space, and if we’re careful enough, we can live there for weeks without ever running into each other.”

“That’s…good?” Bucky offers tentatively.

“Sure,” Steve snorts. “Honestly, she can have the house. I don’t care. I’m the one who fucked up. It’s only fair.”

Steve’s always had that notion of fairness. Thing is, his actions didn’t always line up with his ideals. When they were younger, Bucky gleefully hoarded those moments where Steve was painfully, palpably _human_.

Now, glee is the farthest thing from his mind, but the things Bucky feels aren’t anything he can be proud of either.

“Why does she want to fix it?” he asks. He shouldn’t, probably. But he’s in this, isn’t he? Steve dragged him into the mud, and Bucky chose to splay naked in it. “Like you said, it’s your fault. If I were her, I’d have ditched you in a heartbeat.”

Steve laughs, which is inappropriate on so many levels. The flash of smugness that goes through Bucky seems to disagree.

“You would have, wouldn’t you?” Steve says softly. He tilts his head, levelling a considering stare at Bucky. There’s a moment where he expects to be told to fuck right off, but then Steve’s shoulders slump. “She thinks it’s her fault too. Not me cheating. That’s all on me, we all agree. But the marriage failing. Today, in that room, it was – it was a mess. I married this woman because I loved her, and she loved me, but–”

Steve shakes his head, biting down on his lip.

“But love doesn’t always last,” Bucky completes, reminded eerily of his conversation with Tony.

Steve meets his eyes, smiles bitterly.

“We’d know.”

“We would,” Bucky bites out, suddenly, incandescently angry. “So what then? I’m some catalyst. If it weren’t me, it’d have been someone else?”

“What?” Steve’s whole body jerks upright, and there’s no faking the shock in his voice, on his face. “Bucky, no!”

“Then _what_ , Steve? You keep saying – you do these things, and I – Fuck. What do you _want_ from me?”

Bucky’s voice breaks there at the end. He wipes furiously at his eyes and crushes the instinctive burst of sympathy at Steve’s devastated expression.

“Buck,” Steve says in that heartbreakingly tender way he’s got, “I want anything you can give me. It’s what I always wanted.”

“I gave you _everything_.” Bucky breathes deep, swallows a breath that’s more sob than air. “I gave you everything once. And look where that got us.”

Steve looks on the verge of tears too, now. He walks towards Bucky, hesitant at first like he thinks Bucky will say no. And he should, probably. Proximity won’t help him stay calm, will only cloud his head, but he just stands there and lets Steve trap him between the door and his hulking body.

“I know,” Steve says, and he sounds so – he sounds like he’s breaking. “I thought I was over it. But then I saw you and – it all came rushing back, Buck. You were everything, to me. I thought I moved on, maybe I did, but now I don’t know, I don’t know if I’m ever going to see and not want you.”

“The fuckin’ irony,” Bucky bites out, fisting a hand in Steve’s collar and dragging him down until they’re almost kissing, “of you saying that to me.”

“I know, I know,” Steve says, and then they’re kissing, and Bucky’s walking Steve backward, and their hands are slipping under clothes, and Bucky knew, didn’t he, that this is how it would end up?

  


-

  


It’s nothing at all like the first time they fucked here.

They don’t even take of their clothes. Bucky’s pants are yanked down his thighs, and Steve unzips his fly to free his cock. The prep stings, and Steve’s cock carving Bucky open _burns_ , and it’s fucking perfect.

Steve fists a hand in Bucky’s hair a few thrusts in, yanks his head painfully back, and stuffs fingers into his mouth to muffle his cries. It makes him see stars, the pain and the pleasure, makes him go fucking wild, writhing and whimpering around Steve’s cock, his fingers.

Steve slaps his ass, digs fingers into the hot blooming bruise, and Bucky comes so hard he whites out.

Steve fucks him through it, hard and vicious, until Bucky’s curving his tongue clumsily around syllables to beg him to _just_ _come, come in me, Steve, baby, please_. And Steve does, stilling with his cock deep inside Bucky and shuddering through his orgasm.

Panting in the aftermath, Bucky thinks that it would have been better if this was how they fucked that first time. If it was this animalistic, their bodies reduced to instruments of pleasure, it would have remained uncomplicated, maybe. If Steve didn’t kiss him so sweet that time, didn’t worship Bucky’s body with eyes and hands and cock, maybe he could have let go.

Too late now, he decides grimly.

“I don’t know if I should trust you,” Bucky says, pulling his pants back up and studiously avoiding Steve’s eyes. “I want to. But you cheated on your wife. With me, but still.”

“You think I’ll cheat on you too?”

Bucky shrugs and looks Steve’s feet. Strong fingers grasp his chin and tilt it up. Bucky allows the motion, blinking up at Steve.

“I won’t,” Steve says, voice brimming with that terrible conviction. “Bucky, you have to understand. It’s you. It’s always been you.”

Bucky can’t help swaying forward, pulled inexorably into Steve’s gravity. His arms come around Bucky, holding him so tight and sweet, like Steve can’t bear to even think of letting go.

It shouldn’t make it better, what Steve said. It’s too good to be true, and they’re men who’ve long since lost faith in fairy tales.

But it does. Bucky’s heart thumps painfully in his chest, lighting up with the verbal confirmation that he wasn’t just a warm body. He didn’t really think that anyway – _couldn’t_ , with the way Steve looked at him. But it’s one thing to think so, another to know it, to hear it. And maybe Steve’s lying, but Bucky likes to think he knows those sea-blue eyes too well to not see such a cruel lie.

“Come home with me,” Bucky says, half-challenge, half-plea.

“Yes,” Steve whispers against his lips, soft and fervent. “Yes, Buck, please.”

  


-

  


Steve doesn’t move in so much as he doesn’t quite move out.

They’re both keenly aware of every moment of it. Steve’s clothes slowly migrate to Bucky’s closet and spare room in between visits to the house that are carefully timed so as to avoid his wife. Bucky finds himself making two cups of coffee after he wakes to an empty bed and looking forward to the curiously pleasant stench of Steve’s sweat when he comes back from his run and sweeps Bucky into a crushing hug. On days where Steve leaves work first, he comes to the Tower and braves Tony’s piercing stares to hang out with Bucky, which is probably violating a clause or ten in his contract, but it’s not like Tony gives a fuck. When Bucky’s the first to get off, he goes home and makes dinner instead of ordering like they do most nights. Steve tends to be appreciative of that too, often bodily.

It's a little strange to get laid on the regular. Not the sex itself; that remains mindblowing because dicking Bucky down was a skill Steve perfected before he even learned to knot a tie. But Tony keeps cracking jokes that Bucky only half-understands, and he catches even Maria eyeing him speculatively once or twice. He hasn’t told her that the reason for his permanent glow or whatever shit is Steve, but he wouldn’t put it past her to know already.

It’s not unpleasant, any of it. But there’s a feeling of impermanence to the whole affair. A house of cards, waiting to fall.

Bucky just wonders where that will leave him. And who it will leave him with.

Steve acts like the two of them will be standing tall and true once the dust settles.

Bucky finishes his shower one night and finds Steve sketching on the couch. He looks up before Bucky can pry his eyes away, and he tries to squash his embarrassment at being caught. It's just that he hasn't seen Steve sketch in a very long time.

“There's a view,” Steve says, shamelessly running his eyes over Bucky's half-naked form. “Wanna sit for me?”

Bucky chuckles, as surprised as he's nervous. He tries to hide it and says, “You artists are all like this. Gets a guy to strip and lays him out to draw, not fuck.”

“I've fucked you plenty, sweetheart. And I ain't no artist anymore, just a boring art professor.”

“Boring, huh? Your students agree?”

Steve gives a little half-shrug that doesn't commit to anything. Bucky bets that Steve's students' thoughts would be more in line with Bucky's than Steve's.

“C'mon, Buck,” Steve wheedles, puppy-dog eyes in full force. “Gimme something pretty to look at.”

One day - not tomorrow, not next week, and maybe not in a year assuming Steve will still be around then but _one day_ \- Bucky is going to stay calm and strong in the face of Steve calling him pretty.

But it's sure not today.

He arranges himself on the armchair. Once he's settled, he wishes he grabbed his phone, but Steve's already turning a new page and eyeing Bucky with scorching intensity, and Bucky's loath to move. Soon though, he loses any need for a distraction. Steve's enough of one. Bucky can sit like this for hours if he can watch Steve's face as he makes art.

He still bites his lower lip when he's concentrating really hard on a part he wants to get just right.

It's different too though. His face really has changed. Beautiful as always, but more severe, the impeccably trimmed fuzz over his sharp jaw and cheekbones lending him a perpetually somber air, at least until he smiles.

It suits him. Steve's always been a sunshine boy, golden and good, but there was always a storm waiting in the wings, hidden under the light. He wears it openly these days.

Bucky doesn't register the time passing until Steve sets down his sketchpad and pencil and stretches with a groan. Bucky shakes himself out of his daze and does the same, shaking life into his muscles and popping his neck.

“Show me,” be demands, stalking towards Steve who happily shifts to let Bucky curl up beside him but keeps the sketchpad safely out of view.

“You smell nice,” Steve says, nuzzling at Bucky's temple.

“Thank you. Now, show.”

Steve makes a sound that's halfway between amusement and exasperation.

“Alright. Dog with a bone, aren't you? Warning you though. It's not that good.”

Bucky, making grabby hands for the sketch, doesn't dignify that bullshit with a response.

And it is bullshit. That much is clear at first glance itself. The sketch is – perfect.

It's more shadow than detail, Bucky a thing made of sharp lines and soft shading. But it's him, unmistakable from the face half-hidden under a curtain of hair and the interlinked plates of his metal arm. Steve hasn't shied away from his scars either, his pencil breathing them to life with the same bold certainty with which his lips and teeth press along the dead tissue when he's got Bucky naked at his mercy.

It's not surprising, exactly. Bucky had scars long before the explosion tore him up so bad. Steve was there to see most of them pucker to life, just like Bucky was there to watch and scream and furiously blink back tears as Steve got punched and kicked and shot and knifed. Their bodies have a bloody history; Bucky's just happens to be more colorful.

“You ever wish we'd tried harder to hold on?”

It takes Bucky a second to realize he asked the question. Another second to freak the fuck out. Beside him, Steve tenses before forcibly pushing it out of his muscles with a deep, shaky exhale.

“All the time,” he says softly. “Did you?”

“Was all I thought at first. Got better. I was happy. You seemed happy too. Figured we did the right thing.”

Steve kisses his temple, then his cheek. Bucky closes his eyes with a low, wounded noise.

“We did,” Steve says. “It was the right thing to do then. Had to let go, Buck. But we're here now.”

Steve doesn't pose it as a question but there's a hint of it in his tone, a plea Bucky can't ignore.

“We're here,” Bucky says, turning his head to kiss Steve squarely on the mouth. “Odds of us meeting like this again – might as well call it fate.”

Steve, closet romantic that he's always apparently been, turns the sweetest pink at that. His eyes are bright and blue with pleasure.

“Yes,” he says, so much tenderness packed into the one word. “I like to think so too.”

Bucky has to look away, breathe deep to gather himself. He tells himself not to hope, and then he does this. It's hard, though, to remain unaffected when Steve looks at him like that and draws him like this.

Bucky thumbs a corner of the sketch and asks, “Can I keep this?”

“I – yeah. It’s really rough though.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says pleasantly. “That's bull and you know it. Besides, I've still got those doodles you did of me when you were twelve. You know, the one where you have me devil's horns and blue skin.”

He expects Steve to laugh. But when Bucky looks at him, Steve's staring at him with an odd expression.

“You kept those?”

“I kept all of them.”

Bucky doesn't why it's so hard to say those words when he's said a lot to Steve that was objectively rougher on them both.

Steve's eyes grow wide and a little wet.

“Oh,” he breathes, soft, sad, like a kiss long forgotten.

  


-

  


It’s almost two months after his and Steve’s impromptu cohabitation that he comes home after work to find Steve sitting on the hallway in front of his door, leaning back on it with closed eyes and slumped shoulders. He’s all curled in on himself, like he’s trying to contract into half the size that he is. Bucky stands there for a few seconds, frozen, before jolting to life with a huff.

“Steve?”

Steve opens his eyes, and they’re tired but alert. He doesn’t look like he was asleep.

“Hey.” He tries on a smile, but it’s a grotesque mockery that makes Bucky wince. “Sorry. Took the day off. Didn’t want to come to the Tower today.”

“You could have called me,” Bucky says numbly.

“Think I already disrupt your life enough.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Steve just shrugs. He starts to get up, and Bucky reaches instinctively to help him. A part of him heaves a sigh when Steve takes the offered hand without complaint, but after, Steve just leans against the wall and blankly watches Bucky unlock the door.

Inside, he makes a beeline for the couch. Bucky follows hesitantly, not sure if he should leave Steve alone, but Steve reaches for him before Bucky can back off, and that makes his mind up. He steps between Steve’s spread legs and sighs when Steve hugs him around the waist and buries his face in Bucky’s stomach.

“You alright there, pal?”

“Yeah. Rough session.”

They all seem to be rough sessions, and if they aren’t, they are useless sessions. Steve’s never been this bad after one though.

“I told them I’ve been staying with you,” Steve says, and Bucky sucks in a sharp breath. “Said I didn’t want to fix it. Just wanted out. Sharon looked…relieved. And then she was furious.”

“Christ.” Bucky strokes Steve’s hair, watching the golden strands peek out from between his fingers and wondering who’s being comforted here. “Are you – are you okay?”

Stupid question, maybe, but he’s got to ask.

Steve sighs, shuddering with his whole body.

“Yeah. I’m – yeah. We talked. Sharon and I. Been a long time since we did, it feels like. I just wish – that it wasn’t like this, you know? That I didn’t hurt her. That I’d never married her to begin with.”

Bucky fists his hand in Steve’s hair, then unclenches his fingers and smooths down the strands.

“You ain’t the sort to marry anyone for no reason. Must have loved her.”

“I did,” Steve admits. “Still do, in a way. Didn’t stop me from doing something this terrible to her.”

Bucky can’t help hearing an accusation in that. Maybe Steve aims it at himself, but Bucky’s mind doesn’t need much reason to take it and turn it on itself.

“Do you regret it?” Bucky hears himself ask.

Steve pulls away, arms loosening around Bucky but not letting go. His eyes are a little too bright and red-rimmed when he looks up at Bucky, but the sheen of tears doesn’t diminish the fire in them.

“I regret hurting her,” he says. “I don’t regret this. I don’t regret _you_.”

Bucky wants nothing more than to take those words and curl up around them, let them wrap him up in a false sense of safety. But he’s forty-three, not twenty-eight, and he survived Steve once, but he doesn’t want to find out whether he can do it again.

“Will you?”

For a long few moments, Steve says nothing.

Then, he reaches for Bucky’s face and cups one cheek in his hand. Bucky tilts his face into it, taking what he can for as long as he can have it.

“I won’t,” Steve says. “I don’t know where this is going to end up. I thought I did, the first time, and I was wrong. I’m scared to think in terms of a forever. But, Buck, whatever happens, I wouldn’t change a goddamn thing about this. If I could rewrite the past, I’d still choose to see you at Tony’s party. I’d still kiss you in my office. I’d – I’ve never once regretted falling in love with you, and I won’t regret it this time either.”

Bucky feels gutted.

If Steve stopped with a denial, if all he had to give was bravado and optimism, maybe Bucky wouldn’t have believed him. Would have held on to his doubts at the very least.

But he can’t watch Steve Rogers stitch his broken heart on his sleeve and not have faith.

And it’s not like Bucky doesn’t feel the same; the fear, the hope, the need, it’s all there, brimming inside his chest and threatening to bring him to his knees. He doesn’t know how to say any of that. Steve was always the more open of the two of them, the one who could say what he felt, no holds barred.

So Bucky offers what he can, and it feels only a little like bleeding out.

“I love you too.”

Steve’s eyes go wide with wonder. He tugs Bucky closer, and Bucky folds himself into Steve’s lap. There’s a heartbreaking sweetness to the kisses Steve brushes over his lips, his cheeks, the edges of his jaw, and the beat of his pulse.

Steve pulls back with one final kiss to Bucky’s lips and lowers his head to rest it on his chest, right over his heart. Bucky watches, a little bemusedly, as Steve just stays there, utterly content.

“Happy down there?”

Steve, the little shit, nuzzles into Bucky’s pecs.

“Very.” Steve’s voice rumbles against his skin. “It’s very comfortable here.”

The shift in mood is abrupt and more than a little ridiculous. Bucky is stupidly grateful for it.

“I don’t know why you’re obsessed with them,” Bucky laments, playing it up a little. “Not like you’re slacking in the tits department.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to fuck me.”

“ _Steven_.”

Steve bites Bucky’s nipple, and the sensation ripples through him, strong despite being dulled by a layer of clothing. Bucky shivers, and Steve does it again, closing his mouth around the nub and sucking wetly.

Bucky arches his back, moaning.

When Steve pulls back, there’s a smug grin on his face and a wet patch on Bucky’s T-shirt.

“Asshole,” Bucky grouses, the bite taken out of it by the desire threaded through his voice.

Steve kisses him again, with unmistakable intent, and Bucky melts into it, into him, their joining as slow and inevitable as a river merging with the sea.

  


-

  


It’s still dark when he wakes. It takes Bucky several moments to shake off the disorientation and try to figure out why he’s awake. The reason makes itself known when an instinctual search gives him nothing but rumpled sheets.

Steve’s side of the bed isn’t even warm anymore.

Bucky’s a creature of habits, and he’s certainly had long enough to get used to Steve aggressively spooning him until the sun rose and then ditching him for his morning run.

He does consider just staying in bed and going back to sleep. But he knows he won’t, every passing moment intensifying the restless thump of his heart. And it wouldn’t feel right anyway, leaving Steve out there alone.

Bucky finds him on the couch, sitting in the dark.

“Hey.”

Steve doesn’t seem surprised. He must have heard Bucky.

“Did I wake you?” Steve asks.

“Not really. Mind some company?”

Steve huffs a laugh that Bucky can’t quite place.

“Wouldn’t mind at all. C’mere.”

Bucky sits down beside Steve, close enough to reach out and touch if either of them wanted. And Steve does, scooting closer and resting his head on Bucky’s shoulder. It’s the left one, so it can’t be comfortable. Bucky extracts that arm from between them and places it around Steve’s shoulder, coaxing him down to rest more comfortably against Bucky’s chest.

Bucky means to ask what happened, what’s wrong, but it never seems to be the right time. They just stay like that as the seconds tick by, and Bucky doesn’t even remember falling asleep.

When he jerks awake, there’s light filtering in through the windows.

Steve’s in his lap now, staring up at Bucky. He doesn’t look like he slept at all.

“Hey, sleeping beauty,” he greets, smiling.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, rubbing irritably at his eyes. “Didn’t mean to do that.”

“S’fine. Kinda cute. You still drool.”

Bucky, being an idiot, immediately slaps a hand to his mouth. He finds it dry, the same as it was almost every time Steve tricked him like this.

“You’re a bastard, Rogers.”

“You love me anyway,” Steve says, and he plays it off as casual, but Bucky can hear the awe and the worry.

“I do,” he says and watches Steve’s eyes light up.

They dim a moment later.

“Buck, I think we need to talk.”

He gets up, and the sudden chill in Bucky’s veins can’t be from the loss of Steve’s warmth in his lap.

“What – what about?”

_Did you change your mind? Are you going back?_

Bucky doesn’t voice either thought. Steve hasn’t – Steve wasn’t acting like a man who wanted to leave Bucky five seconds ago. Bucky doesn’t know what to make of last night, but he can give Steve the benefit of doubt. Let him talk.

“Sharon’s filing for divorce,” Steve says.

Bucky swallows, throat clicking audibly.

“Oh. What are you going to do?”

“Sign everything my lawyer tells me to sign.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

There’s a brief, awkward silence.

“I’m sorry, Steve.”

“Had to happen.” Steve sighs. “Could have been kinder, but that’s on me.”

“Steve–”

Steve takes his hand, squeezing like Bucky’s the one here who needs reassurance.

“It’s okay,” he says, maybe to Bucky, maybe to himself. “It’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” Bucky echoes.

“I need to get my stuff from the house. Find a place.”

“What do you mean?”

Steve turns to look at him. He’s nervous, Bucky realizes. It’s there in his eyes and the tight clutch of his fingers.

“Can’t just mooch off you forever, Buck. Knew I should have started looking a while back, but it was – it was nice. Being here with you. I didn’t want it to end.”

Bucky’s stunned silent for a few seconds.

Then he explodes.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he snarls. Steve starts, but Bucky holds on tight to his hand and doesn’t let him get away. “What the hell, Steve? You want to pay half the bills, you could have just fucking said so.”

Steve blinks at him with wide, startled eyes.

“That’s not what I–”

“You’re an idiot. I don’t know what I keep seeing in you.”

That makes Steve laugh for some reason, the sound shocked out of him.

“I don’t, uh, Bucky?”

“What?”

“You mean that? You don’t think it’s a bad idea?”

Bucky sighs, shakes his head. He forces himself to think and not just blurt out a soulless assurance.

“Could be, I don’t fucking know. Any of this not been a bad idea? But you’ve been living with me for the last two months. We haven’t burned the place down. Your divorce doesn’t change much except make the whole thing less illicit. I mean, I’m still a homewrecker, but–”

“No,” Steve cuts in. “Don’t. It’s not on you. It’s me.”

“I fucked you knowing full well you were married,” Bucky reminds him sharply. “No, don’t. What I did is on me, I’m a fucking adult who can take responsibility for my choices. That’s not the point. Do you want to stay? That’s all I need to know.”

“Bucky,” Steve says helplessly. “Of course I want to stay.”

“That’s settled then.”

Steve opens his mouth like he’s gonna argue some more just for the hell of it, but he subsides under Bucky’s glare. He leans in too, crowding Bucky into a slightly awkward, considerably desperate hug that Bucky returns with equal feeling.

“Thank you,” Steve murmurs into his ear.

“Don’t thank me. Just stay with me.”

“As long as you’ll have me.”

  


-

  


When Steve leaves for college a few hours later, Bucky kisses him at the door and presses a key into his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I love to hear from you!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [collab: voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361448) by [kocuria-visuals (kocuria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria-visuals)




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